


Cybernatural

by TigerLilyNoh



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Addiction, Angst, Case Fic, Cyberpunk, Demon Blood Addict Sam Winchester, Demons, Dystopia, F/M, Hurt Sam Winchester, Neo-Noir, Older Sam Winchester, Parent Sam Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester, Sam Winchester-centric, Vampires, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:15:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 20
Words: 84,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22658410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerLilyNoh/pseuds/TigerLilyNoh
Summary: Sam would’ve expected the Apocalypse to have been the most difficult chapter in his life, but that ordeal had been a sprint compared to the marathon of his later years.  For decades the hits kept coming one after the other: addiction, illness, and loss— all piled atop a world that had turned harsh.  The year is 2078, and the world around him has changed, twisted by ecological disaster, extreme wealth disparity, and the struggle of non-humans trying to integrate into society.During the last few painful decades of his life, Sam had turned inward as he focused on trying to protect and mentor his family’s next generation of hunters: Jack, Dean’s half-reaper daughter, and his demonic genderqueer child.  But during his latest case, he discovers that his family has become caught up in something much bigger than expected.  Their investigation leads them into some of the unsavory corners of the city’s supernatural underground, and pieces from Sam’s tragic and sordid past start coming out.  He just wanted to protect his family, but it was just like a Winchester to have good intentions go so very wrong.
Relationships: Sam Winchester/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 23
Collections: Sam Winchester Big Bang 2019-20





	1. A Slow Start

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the Sam Winchester Big Bang.  
> A collection of Noctemus's wonderful artwork for this story can be viewed at https://archiveofourown.org/works/22672117/chapters/54190150
> 
> Many thanks to the following:
> 
> Noctemus for making these gorgeous works of art. Seeing your work was literally inspiring, pushing me to make the characters and setting even more nuanced. It was an absolute pleasure working with you.
> 
> Mpanighetti for nurturing this story even back when it was an even more absurd idea and for your help betaing.
> 
> Monicawoe for swooping in during the eleventh hour, when I was in a complete rut, to give me encouragement and help with betaing.

Sam woke up, stretched his aching lower back, then sat up in bed. He picked up his watch from the nightstand and placed it on his wrist. Once its sensors were lined up with the diminutive metal leads on the inside of his arm, the watch’s screen illuminated. It started scrolling assorted vitals across its small display, but he was still too groggy to process all of it. 

He tapped the side of the watch, then muttered, “Just tell me if I’m gonna die today.”

“Not from cholesterol,” the device replied in a lighthearted feminine voice. “Your vitals appear normal, though you seem to be in pain.”

“I noticed.” 

He turned on the bedside lamp, then dug through his nightstand for a fresh syringe. Despite some lingering grogginess, he easily loaded it into the small synthetic dispenser beside the light. The act was so routine he could have done it in the dark.

“Is the pain anomalous?” the watch asked. “Do we need to perform diagnostics?”

“It’s just my back.” A quick glance at the bedding confirmed that during the night he must’ve tossed and turned enough to misalign the couple small pillows he’d used to correct his posture. “I slept in a bad position is all.”

“You should consider sleeping with your watch on. I could monitor your sleep cycle and suggest corrective measures.”

Sam rubbed his face as he let out a quiet groan. As much as he appreciated the AI’s attempt to help resolve the problem, he wasn’t in the mood to get into an argument with his watch over healthy living. He already knew several factors contributing to his poor quality of sleep and was decidedly not about to pursue them. A therapist wasn’t about to accept the reasons for his nightmares, nor would a medical doctor be able to understand his overall predicament. Unfortunately, even the most open-minded software still had trouble wrapping its head around certain oddities. At least it would obediently allow him to change the subject.

He closed the synthesizer’s protective cover, then switched the device on as he asked the watch, “Aila, can you make the serum a little stronger today?”

“Certainly. We can increase potency by up to 10% before you begin feeling withdrawal symptoms tomorrow on anything less than a 5% three-day drawdown,” the voice informed him. “Is that sufficient or would you like to set a higher percentage?”

He held his hands out, taking a moment to study them for tremors or see if there were any other symptoms. Breathing in and out slowly, he searched for that feeling of wrongness that seemed to sneak up on him and permeate his very being when he was distracted. Maybe he didn’t know how to quantify the sensations or qualify what an increase of 10% on his dosage meant, but he definitely needed a pick-me-up, and one that didn’t risk sending him into serious withdrawals was hard to refuse.

“Ten is fine,” he replied.

The synthesizer hummed softly for a couple seconds, then chimed. Sam withdrew the syringe full of clear liquid, tapped it a few times to make sure there wasn’t any air inside—it was an old habit, left over from earlier generations of synthesizers. When he was satisfied with the dose, he slowly injected it into his right thigh. The three-inch-diameter patch of skin had been permanently numbed long ago in order to save him the effort of applying local anesthetic every morning. He sat on the edge of his bed for several minutes, waiting for the familiar ache in the muscle to dissipate ever so slightly. It was going to be a long day; he could feel it.

The customary morning pain in his thigh caused him to hobble over to his dresser. He grabbed a set of clothes selected for comfort rather than appearance, then made his way down the hall to the bathroom. The cold concrete corridors were silent, indicating that everyone else was sleeping or off running errands. When he got into the bathroom, he dropped the clothes onto a free section of the utilitarian sink’s counter, and started the shower. 

Before climbing in, Sam stripped off his pajamas and stopped to look at himself in the mirror. He only-somewhat-effectively avoided looking at the intricate black tattoos that covered his upper torso and shoulders. Instead, he looked at his face. His fingers traced the half-dozen fading, ragged scars on its left side. The wrinkles forming at the corners of his eyes weren’t particularly noticeable from far off. It was the significant streaks of grey hair that really gave him away. Granted, his physical appearance didn’t tip his hand too much. He looked good for his age.

* * *

Sam stood in the base’s kitchen, slowly assembling something vaguely resembling breakfast. His brother had always been the one to prepare meals from scratch, but cooking had never been a strength of his. He grabbed a brick of freeze-dried oatmeal, dropped it unceremoniously into a bowl, then shoved it into the hydrator in order to reconstitute it. A warning light flashed on the small, blocky appliance as he turned every nutritional dial up to the maximum value. Knowing him, the quick bite would have to last him until someone eventually pulled him away from his work for dinner.

After starting up the food, he began on his beverage: sea brew. He pushed down the plunger on his french press, rendering an inky black liquid with a nutty odor. The seaweed-based concoction didn’t have the glamour of coffee, but it was more highly caffeinated and considerably cheaper than the scarce crop. He didn’t bother diluting it with any number of creamers designed to further the illusion of a morning classic. Even served straight, it lacked the bitterness of coffee. Instead it had a slightly-tart bite, followed by a rich butteriness and mild earthy aftertaste. Things weren’t the way they had been when he was younger. There was no point pretending.

He grabbed the oatmeal and cup of sea brew, then took a seat at the kitchen table. Most mornings he would pull up the news on either the wall monitor or have Aila read it to him, but he hesitated for a moment. The serum was still working its way through his system, attempting to instill some life back into his old bones. He tried to enjoy the quiet and calm a minute or two longer before turning his attention to whatever madness had ensued over the last seven hours.

Rather than pulling up a video feed, he decided to read a text version of the current events. The last thing he needed was a rapid-fire barrage of unsettling stories, beyond his immediate ability to curate; the damn video segments always went by so fast that he couldn’t up- or down-vote half of them for relevancy.

He grabbed a tablet and laid it down on the table beside his oatmeal, so that he didn’t have to look up from his breakfast. Flipping through the news thankfully didn’t provide much excitement. The federal government had approved a hundred billion dollars in funding to improve the military defense satellite network. After a six-month siege, Prague had finally surrendered to the Central-European Coalition. The Kings Canyon Fire out in California was almost 25% contained. Some musician he didn’t listen to had died in a car accident and their donor-viable organs had broken the record for highest grossing transplant auction.

As he read, footsteps echoed through the hallway, letting him know that he would soon have company. He looked up from the tablet, then took a sip of his sea brew.

“You doing okay?”

There was a slightly feminine androgynous-looking person hovering anxiously in the doorway. They had dark umber hair that bordered on black in a pixie cut. Their skin was mostly pale with a few large patches of light brown, and eyes that hinted at some east asian ancestry, though their irises were multichromatic. They wore a loose, purple romper, a maroon hoodie, and black flip flops.

“I just went too hard the last few days,” Sam explained. “I’ll be fine.”

“You, pushing yourself too hard? Unheard of,” they replied while strolling over and leaning down to wrap their arms around his shoulders, giving him a hug.

Sam glanced over at Shae’s necklace. The small, silver pendant depicted a crescent moon, telling everyone in the know that they were currently she.

He reached up and lightly tugged on one of her hoodie’s drawstrings. “You staying in today?”

“The caseload is thin—“ She knocked on the metal tabletop, not realizing that the origin of the gesture had intended for it to be wood, but it wasn’t practical to correct such an antiquated custom. “—mostly civs, and Jack is out on our only case with claws. I’ll suit up if things change, but a quiet morning sounds good.”

A small, knowing smile curled on Sam’s lips before he asked, “When did you get back from clubbing?”

“Clubbing,” she echoed playfully with a roll of her eyes at the old slang. Her hand lightly patted his cheek, teasingly shoving him, as she stepped around him to go make her own breakfast. “I  _ crushed _ the scene until about an hour ago.”

He checked his watch. She’d returned to the base sometime after 4am. His smile faltered a bit. He didn’t much care for the clubs that ran nonstop.

“Was it a nest-run club?” he asked, suddenly concerned.

“There might’ve been a couple vamps around; it’s not like I’m touching everyone with deadman’s-blood-dipped silver when I walk in the door,” she replied before dumping the sea brew grounds from the french press into a bowl. “If there were vamps, they were usin’ plenty of restraint.”

“Did something happen?”

Shae sprinkled some corn syrup flakes onto the mound of highly-caffeinated, black mulch, then grabbed a spoon and took a bite. Her eyebrows rose subtly at the assault on her taste buds, but she kept eating it. She’d always had a preference for strong flavors.

“I broke a guy’s nose,” she continued, casually between bites. “If there were any predator-classes there, they were chill enough to not jump the first fresh blood to hit the floor.”

Sam considered asking what had earned the man his beating, but thought better of it. He could imagine dozens of scenarios, nearly all of which made his stomach churn with acid. But the fact of the matter was that she was a better fighter than most and he couldn’t follow her on every date, ready to beat up whichever guy decided to make a tasteless joke or be too handsy.

“It’s probably too much to ask that you try going on a normal, quiet date for once,” he commented into his mug.

“It’s easier to bag a snack at a club than work a cover over multiple dates.”

“It’s like you’re channeling your uncle,” Sam muttered. In a more sincere voice he said, “As long as you’re happy.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Shae told him as she gave him a peck on the cheek, then sat down at the table next to him.

To say that Shae had been an accident would’ve been an understatement and misleading. For one thing, she didn’t have a mother. Forty-six years earlier, Sam had been fighting a demon when a little arterial spray had gotten into his mouth. He’d been on his own in a fairly isolated area and by the time he’d reached civilization his addiction had taken hold. Dean and Castiel had been unable to find him for over five weeks. When they did locate him he was dangerously far gone. His powers had reached a level where capturing him was nearly impossible.

In an attempt to get Sam under control, they tried a spell designed to remove the demon blood from his system, sobering him up instantly. Unfortunately, the spell had done far more than anticipated. They had underestimated how much of his body was permeated with demonic essence. It was not only in the blood he had consumed; it was part of every organ in his body, a part of him since the ritual Azazel had performed on him at six months old. The trace amounts of demonic energy from each cell were stripped from him and the spell combined it together to create an entirely new being. A perfect hybrid of every source of demonic influence was condensed, made into the form of an infant. Of course, another unanticipated factor was that of all the demonic essence in him, the vast majority of it was his own. By Castiel’s estimation, the baby was roughly 40% Sam. 

Through some miracle, the spell hadn’t killed Sam, but he had been knocked unconscious and bedridden for several months. Even after that he had been left severely disabled. His entire body had lost a piece of its puzzle, one that he had unknowingly been dependent on throughout his life. For nearly twenty years he had been too ill to hunt, until an ex-hunter-turned-supernatural-night-nurse friend had developed a serum to replace some of the effects of his lost demonic nature.

It had been quite a shock to wake up over a week after the longest intoxicated binge of his life to discover that not only was he disabled, but a demonic child was waiting for him. In an odd sort of way, his utter exhaustion from his new illness had been a blessing. Early on, he could hardly stay awake for more than a half hour at a time, which didn’t leave much time or energy to panic or react to the situation. Overall it was a metered out acceptance of his new life and responsibility.

Jack had been fond of the kid immediately. He had taken the initiative of care for the baby while Sam was unconscious. Meanwhile Dean and Castiel had been a bit thrown by its presence. The last demonic child they’d heard of had been the Antichrist, a creature of incredible power. It scared the hell out of them. Had it not been for Jack—both his instant affection for the baby and their experience seeing a powerful being mature—they might well have discussed simply killing it. But in only a few weeks, they’d all grown to love the very unorthodox child.

Aside from being largely demonic, Shae had one other characteristic that they all had to get used to. Being a composite of so many different demons, they were intersex, going so far as to have full sets of both genitalia. Dean had initially referred to Shae as “he” while the others opted for “they,” occasionally slipping with a male pronoun. But when Shae was five they started leaning a bit more feminine. She eventually categorized herself femme-leaning genderqueer. On her sixteenth birthday Sam had sat her down and asked if she wanted to have her penis surgically or magically removed, but she declined. She was uniquely herself, and he admired her for it.

Sam smiled subtly as he watched her lean over to peek at a news report on the tablet while taking another ungracefully large bite of the sweetened sea brew grounds. He huffed a tired chuckle and said, “I can’t believe you eat that stuff.”

Without looking up from the article, she replied, “You drink it. I’m just taking efficiency up a tick.”

* * *

After a few minutes of quietly reading beside Shae at the kitchen table, they were joined by another bleary-eyed young hunter. Kesi had rich, russet-brown skin, dark eyes, and black coils of hair that just framed her angular face. Her nose was a bit pointy, like her paternal family, and she had her dad’s freckles. She wore black leggings under a black dress that was patterned with small skulls. Her right forearm was fitted with her favorite accessory: a six-inch-long digital bracer with a full-length touch-sensitive display.

She barely looked up from whatever she was reading on her bracer as she walked. Her left hand waved at the room generally, greeting those around her, even if the individual occupants hadn’t yet been identified.

Sam fetched a mug of sea brew with oat milk for her, setting it down on the table in front of her. “Work or fun?”

“Fun for now,” she replied, accepting the beverage—still without having made eye contact. “They discovered another element. We’ll see if anything useful comes out of it.”

He smiled at her academic curiosity. Ever since she was a child, she’d loved learning. As young as eight, she’d sit on his lap while he’d do the research for the rest of the team’s hunts.

She was seven years younger than Shae, which meant that while his child was out getting field experience with Dean, Castiel, and Jack, Sam would often find himself having a lot of time one-on-one with his niece. He’d always felt some small amount of regret that he hadn’t been in good enough health to take Shae out on all the adventures that she’d longed for. But Kesi was always happy to explore the world through books and digital archives. Of course, when she was older, Kesi had grown to tolerate field work well enough.

After his health had improved from the serum treatments, Sam had slowly weaned his way back into working in the field. It had been an incredible struggle. For almost two decades he’d been physically disabled, and through the natural progression of aging he’d never be in the same shape as he’d been when he stopped hunting at the age of forty-eight— but circumstances had called on him to step up.

Dean had been killed on a hunt when Kesi was fourteen. Castiel had been left in a weakened state from the same battle. Jack had field experience, but didn’t know how to be the source of support necessary to carry Shae and Kesi through such a difficult time. So Sam had started periodically going into the field again at the age of sixty-eight. 

If someone had told him as a child that he would be fighting werewolves at nearly seventy, he would’ve called them insane. If someone had told him what his life would be like at ninety-five years old, he would’ve been dumbfounded. Human life expectancy had increased slightly over the last century—assuming you weren’t killed by the world and its inhabitants—but even that didn’t explain how he was approaching three digits and still seeing combat when the occasion necessitated.

There was a difference between maturing and aging, and as easily overlooked as the obvious fact might be, demons didn’t age. None of them had realized just how much he was demonic, until that aspect of him had been removed. No one had questioned why he’d had hardly any crows feet or grey hairs, despite living a life that was hard by hunter standards into his late forties. It had all gone unnoticed because he had matured at a typical human rate, developing into an excellent physical specimen, then plateauing… but not declining nearly as much as one might expect. Then that abruptly changed.

When his demonic energy was ripped from him, his biological clock started up again. For eighteen years, he’d suffered the effects of normal human aging, camouflaged by his illness. No one had observed the subtle change and asked the question of what impact Sam’s demonic nature had on his unadulterated mortality. But after taking the serum treatment for a few years, he’d started noticing that his hair wasn’t greying as quickly, and that the wearing on his skin had slowed to an almost imperceivable pace. Not only had his health improved, his biological clock seemed to tick at a couple minutes per hour. In theory, he could increase his dosage to further slow the rate, but he was scared to invite other side effects. The result was that he currently looked to only be in his sixties or early seventies. It wasn’t the typical human life, but then again, crimes against the natural order seemed to be a theme for their family.

When Kesi finally did look up from the article, her face scrunched up a bit and she asked him, “Are you okay?” She gestured in a broad circular motion at him. “You have this gloomy funk on you.”

“I didn’t sleep well,” Sam replied, dismissing any worries she might have about him.

“Are you using those lumbar pillows?” his niece asked while stirring her beverage. “Five different sources agreed that those are the best ones.”

He slipped his hand into his pocket, hoping that his watch wouldn’t overhear and attempt to join the discussion. “They’re fine. It’s just orthopedists don’t factor in the quality of sleep I normally get.”

“You having nightmares again?” asked Shae between bites of sea brew dregs.

Before he could answer, Kesi said, “I found a few studies on a med that stops the mental recordation of REM sleep. It doesn’t actually stop the nightmares, but you won’t remember it when you wake up. It just started human trials—”

“Thanks, but no experimental drugs,” he told her. The thought of something interacting with his serum was downright terrifying.

“Glass of warm lactose-free milk,” Kesi offered as an alternative.

Shae countered, “A couple shots of synthehol is cheaper.”

“I’m fine.” He raised his hands in forfeit. For the first time, he noticed that they were seated on either side of him. He was surrounded. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. I got six hours last night.”

They both eyed him skeptically, but relented.

As they all had their respective breakfasts, Kesi pulled up her bookmarked queries on the large wall-mounted display, then selected the one that was second from the top, after breaking news. The city map appeared on the screen and began populating with hundreds of tiny dots of various colors. Each hue signified a different reported cause of death for a victim since she ran the last search. She zoomed in to the neighborhood where their base was located, and to a few areas that she frequented. As she studied the forty-six closest deaths, she idly chewed on her fingernails.

Habit almost led Sam to tell her to stop biting her nails, but a pang of sympathy stopped him from highlighting the anxious tic. Instead, he handed her a pressed-bamboo-fiber stir stick to gnaw on. She spared him a quick sidelong glance before accepting it.

Billie’s name hadn’t been mentioned more than a handful of times since Kesi was an infant. Dean had been tight-lipped about every aspect of his daughter’s origins. It wasn’t clear how much of that was his own embarrassment and hurt feelings, but there was an unspoken concern about how Kesi perceived the fact that her mom had intentionally never been in her life.

“You don’t have to go on rotation if you don’t want to,” Sam told her. “Our current caseload is light. We can let the rest of the local hunters know we’re calling it capacity for a while.”

“I’m barely logging field time as it is.” She made a swiping gesture at the screen, erasing the map. “Dad had like fifty times as many wins when he was my age.”

“Hunts were different back then. And your dad wasn’t exactly a role model.” He put his hand on her shoulder, then said, “You don’t have to be like him to make him proud.”

Kesi smiled meekly before looking between the monitor and one of the security cameras that was in the corner of the room. When the screen didn’t change, she asked, “Is he still asleep?”

“I haven’t seen him so far,” Sam replied. “I figured if he didn’t get up on his own, I’d wake him up after the morning routine.”

“I just got in,” added Shae. “Dean didn’t pounce on me in the garage wanting gossip.”

He checked his watch. Usually, Dean would notice three people’s worth of activity, especially if his name was mentioned, but it wasn’t unheard of for him to drag his feet if he was having a particularly enjoyable dream…. And yet, Sam got an uncomfortable feeling in his gut at the absence.

“Alright,” he sighed while standing up. “Time to check on your dad.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I’m gonna address it since I’m sure someone out there is thinking it. If you’ve read Job & Family, you might be like “Shae sounds an awful lot like Kay.” Yeah, I know, and I’m sure it’s gonna make people draw parallels and compare them, but I just like the gender neutral name Shae so fucking much. They’re both Sam’s adult demonic child, but they’re very different characters. Hopefully the name similarity won’t cause too much of a problem for people.


	2. The Old Guard

Sam walked over to the wall screen and tabbed it over to the admin’s panel. After working his way through a few security precautions, he unlocked access to a program running in the background of their most secure computer. It was an AI with a singular purpose: to keep Dean a functional member of the family, despite the fact that he was dead.

Dean had died twenty-five years earlier and made the poor decision of trying to remain on the plane in order to stay with his daughter. His existence as a ghost had been disheartening to the family because of the inevitable decline that would come. But the kids had a novel idea. If ghosts became insane from a change in their perception of and ability to interact with reality, then maybe the damage could be prevented by altering the ghost’s subjective reality.

It took a little experimentation, but Dean eventually figured out how to interface with a prototype AI. Instead of acting as a personal assistant, the program’s sole purpose was to course-correct his mental stability. Unfortunately, that left him anchored to hardware that supported his AI. For the most part, he was essentially a disembodied consciousness — a literal ghost in the machine.

Sam started scrolling through the latest readout of the equivalent of synaptic activity. Something was going on in that simulator. “Hey, Dean. You awake?”

The display flickered, then switched over from the screensaver. A grainy image of Dean’s face appeared on the monitor. In theory the resolution was capable of portraying him with perfect accuracy; the ripples and distortions were manifestations of his own uncertainty as to exactly what he looked like. Or maybe it was a form of body dysmorphia from having seen too many Matrix-era sci-fi films.

“Can someone figure out if there’s a way to give me a slower transition?” Dean rubbed his face in what Sam assumed was purely reflex. “I was having a really nice dream or hallucinations or whatever.”

“You can’t make that change yourself?”

“Man, it is hard to tweak the basic stuff in here. Half the time I can’t tell if I’m actually talking to the real AI or if it’s a fake.”

“I’ve got you,” Kesi volunteered as she got up from her seat and walked over.

“Thanks, baby girl.” The expression of fatigue and some of the irregularities in the image were instantly gone. He was too busy smiling, delighted to see Kesi.

“Morning, Dad.” She leaned in and gave the touchpad a little peck. “You need any other tweaks on your script while I’m at it?”

“Nothing else. It’s just a little disorienting going straight from driving down the highway or torching a ghost to being a web of computers and cameras.”

She thought for a moment. “I could probably build in a fade. Maybe add an auditory warning too.”

With Kesi already at work thinking up a solution to the problem, Sam grabbed the remainder of his sea brew, then started walking out of the kitchen, but stopped short of the door to tell them, “I’m gonna go to work. Kesi, let me know if you need someone to go through any of his logs.”

Dean’s image awkwardly leaned to one side of the two-dimensional plane he was trapped in, attempting to point his finger at Sam, who was almost perpendicular to it. “Stay the hell out of my logs.”

Despite the warning, Sam was allowed to review his activity log. Technically they could get a full list and even video of everything Dean experienced in his reality, though no one did him the disservice of checking them unless there was some important reason, like diagnostics. There wasn’t any doubt that it contained graphic sexual content. Hence why the family had unanimously decided that Sam would have the poor luck of being the one to potentially stumble upon such private content.

“If we could write a script to automatically delete all the logs where you’re naked, we would,” Sam muttered as a joke.

It wasn’t actually the impossible task he was making it out to be. There simply existed an understanding that no one would tamper with what might constitute the boundaries of Dean’s world. Essentially erasing all of his memories of what was left of his sexuality was just cruel.

“Bite my incorporeal or metal ass,” Dean replied. “Your choice which one.”

Sam halfheartedly waved in lieu of either reassurance or further banter. His brother had limitless energy and without intervention could trade barbs for literal days. It was occasionally painful to abruptly cut their interactions short—they were Dean’s only source of real socialization, after all—but everyone else had a job to do. Thankfully, he understood the demands of being a hunter as well as any of them.

Sipping his sea brew, Sam made his way to his office. His thigh wasn’t aching nearly as much as before, but he still moved at a gradual pace. Whatever caffeine he was getting from his morning beverage was barely cutting through his pain-and-melancholy-fueled fatigue. Rather than going down the three steps between the library and the eastern hallway, he walked down the wheelchair ramp they’d installed long ago. As he approached the eastern end of the base, he could hear the soft, distant rumble of a subway train passing through the tunnel a few hundred meters away; it was probably the 905 Express.

He opened the door to his small office and manually turned on the light. It was little more than a computer desk and chair, with a collection of odds and ends stacked against the far wall. Many of the objects had been placed there over the years for no better reason than their association with him. At some point he’d go through everything and sort it, but every time he’d start he would become caught up in bittersweet nostalgia or remorse— anyway, there was plenty more important work than cleaning.

That side of the base was always a few degrees colder than the quarters wing, so he plucked his shabby wool sweater from the coat hanger and slipped it on while he stood in front of the one case that adorned the wall. Printed photographs and aging handwritten notes were taped to the concrete. Everything else was delegated to digital format, but this one had a place of honor. That tangible evidence wouldn’t be forgotten in some subdirectory. It had been there, staring at him every day, unsolved for over four years.

He reached out to adjust the alignment of the most prominent of the missing-persons photos. His hand settled on the concrete wall and for a moment he felt particularly heavy. The case was cold, even if he couldn’t bring himself to archive it.

As he stood there, contemplating that haunting case, he started to feel a bit dizzy. He braced himself, trying to get his bearings. For a second he thought about trying to go sit down in his chair, but wasn’t sure if moving would make it worse. He took a few deep breaths. The rushing air of his inhaling and exhaling nearly sounded like far-off whispers. Just as he was about to call for help, the feeling passed.

He sat at his desk, set his mug down, then said, “Aila, run vitals, a complete blood count, full diagnostics.”

He could feel the pinprick on the back of his wrist. After a few seconds, the watch responded, “Aside from a spike in adrenaline, all values are within standard criteria.”

Excluding all of the mundane illnesses that could come with advanced age, he was particularly concerned that there might be a problem with his serum dosage. He’d increased it a bit, and while Aila was programmed to prevent him from venturing into dangerous levels, he was always worried that something would go wrong. That precious liquid kept him on a narrow path between different torments.

“Are there any modifications to the standard criteria settings?”

“No. The last time you modified standard settings was last March,” she explained. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know.” He rubbed his face. “It doesn’t sound like it, does it?”

“It’s not my intention to dissuade you from your conclusions.”

That small reassurance made him feel a bit better. At least she didn’t think he was dumb or losing his grip. He was stressed; that was evident from his nightmares. “Thank you, Aila,” he replied as he turned his focus to his work.

His work desk setup was fairly elaborate, in spite of modern technology’s propensity for being small and sleek enough to get lost in any convenient crevasse. He’d collected tech over the last half-century, modifying or replacing pieces as needed. At least a quarter of the small scars on his hands were from the sharp edges of component cases. Shae and Kesi had occasionally teased him for the more arcane equipment, but every time he reminded them that new didn’t always mean better.

The world was changing. It always had been, but now it was accelerating towards something he could hardly fathom. Pragmatism was becoming more and more a survival skill. He’d tried his best to keep up with everything; he’d spent over a decade teaching himself the fundamentals of circuits and hardware — just before the industry revolutionized with microcircuits and such heavily-proprietary pieces that no hobbyist stood a chance. After that he’d studied programming, though his niece had outpaced him in that field when she was only ten. Everything just seemed to move faster than it used to; maybe it was just part of modern urban life.

The city didn’t stop. That was the regional motto, and it held true to form. For better or worse, it was relentless. There had been a sort of peace in the small town of Lebanon. They’d operated out of that Men of Letters bunker for thirteen years, but eventually it became clear that the isolation and stillness was dangerous. As rapid storms and the ambient level of pollution increased, it was harder to make a spontaneous 18-hour drive for a case.

The entire hunting community had been turned upside-down by their new reality, so territories were divided up and assignments handed out. Thanks to their place of authority or seniority within the community, Sam and Dean were allowed to pick their base of operations. They consulted the handful of known abandoned Letters’ bases, and settled on the city, claiming their domain. Neither of them had been thrilled by the switch to a metropolitan setting, but it had the infrastructure and plenty of cases at their fingertips. They adapted; it’s what they did.

Sam tabbed through the bulletins for adjacent hunter territories. A priest had been turned inside out. A black dog. Some three-hundred-year-old oak tree was bleeding— He rolled his eyes imagining what a pain in the ass that one would be. As much as he missed greenery, he was grateful that he didn’t have to deal with the wrath of various nature spirits. Regardless, none of the items appeared to be the sort that would cross the border into his territory.

Their account with the hunters network was under Shae’s name, with Kesi as secondary. Dean’s name had aptly been removed upon his death. Anyone who was counting would’ve realized that Jack was middle-aged, though having been born into the body of an adult had tweaked the perception, making him retirement age for even the most fortunate hunters.

Meanwhile, officially speaking, Sam was dead. According to the rumors, he’d been injured on a hunt when he was forty-eight, sustaining injuries that he’d never fully recovered from. He had worked on-and-off as remote support, but years later died of complications. Combined with his old age, “complications” had an easily dismissible quality to it.

Prior to his “death,” he had introduced Shae as his daughter, and Kesi as Dean’s. That way the hunting community wouldn’t be surprised when the two women attempted to take up their dads’ mantles. Their mothers had been excused as one-night-stands—probably accurately so in Dean’s case—which didn’t raise any eyebrows within the hunting community.

Shae and Kesi were admittedly forty-six and thirty-nine years old respectively, but their continued moderate-to-high level of activity as hunters had been dismissed by the advancements in medical technology. Anyway, the network was just happy to have warm bodies available to fight the good fight. The fact that, as not-full humans, the kids weren’t necessarily aging at a human rate would probably go unnoticed until the situation became so absurd that it couldn’t be overlooked… like a ninety-five-year-old chasing a rugaru. 

His knees were still hurting from that one, two months later. There was a reason he avoided doing field work. Technically, he could still do it, but slowed-aging or not, it was taking a toll on him. He massaged his sore thigh a bit, then closed the window for the hunters network. It was time to check on their active cases. He pressed his thumb to the print reader on the computer in order to access the most secure user account.

The screen prompted, “Voice or retinal authentication required.”

“Some say the world will end in fire. Some say in ice.”

The screen illuminated as six new windows popped up. He slipped a small audio receiver in his ear, then pulled up the live feeds.

Jack had switched on the audio and visual feeds from the hidden camera and mic he was wearing while on the job. In fact, he’d left the audio open in both directions, in anticipation of having someone back at the base communicate with him. Sam turned on his mic.

“Jack, it’s Sam. I’m on your feed.” He wanted to at least give that warning. The courtesy had become standard practice after one too many times accidentally tabbing in to find Dean face-first in a waitress’s crotch. “Glance to your right if you want me to leave you alone.”

Jack glanced to the left, covertly reassuring him that he didn’t mind the ride along. He never did. Unlike Shae and Kesi, Jack was always happy to have Sam on hand.

For decades, Jack had been working to cope with the fact that he didn’t have a soul. For the most part, he tried to imagine what Sam or Dean might do in any given scenario, but it wasn’t uncommon for him to not be able to figure out what the right course of action was. In moments like that, he was always grateful to have Sam whispering the answer into his ear. And Sam was happy to do what he could to help keep him safe— to keep all the kids safe.

* * *

Jack’s heavy boots thudded against the skeletal metal walkway as he made his way to check a lead. Through the grates he could see the ground-level sidewalks thirty feet below. The “Upper Crust” had been built in many densely-packed metropolitan areas, a second layer of commerce piled on the old. What was the phrase: “Shit flows downhill”? Surely that was right.

He casually glanced over the railing while passing by alleyways that jutted off to the side, between the towering buildings. His vision wasn’t nearly as good as it had been in his youth, but he could still see better than a human. Every few months, he would have the good (or bad) fortune to spot a ghoul hunched in the shadows, devouring the corpse of a homeless person. There hadn’t been any recent cold snaps or heatwaves, so it wasn’t as likely, since there were fewer dead on the streets, but he liked to check just the same. Not that he had enough time to do anything about such a scenario; he was on a job already.

The morning sun was valiantly attempting to pour in between the skyscrapers. The few rays that made it illuminated the haze that filled the streets. At this time of day, the thin smog only reached six stories. Come nighttime, the moisture in the air would condense, growing into a cloud that would engulf all but the tallest spires and drizzle mildly acidic rain on everything below a hundred feet.

It was a miracle that the environment was in as good a shape as it was. A generation or so earlier it had been unbearable. Back then, nearly everyone used respiratory filters while walking around outside. Nowadays, the precaution was only taken by vulnerable populations.

When the environmental crisis was at its worst, a desperate attempt at self-preservation was made by groups of the most wealthy humans. Rather than trying to clean up the mess, the economic elites began fleeing the Earth on private spacecrafts. The move had garnered a lot of justifiable anger, that the upper class might abandon the rest of the species to die. There were still monuments to the riots, though many had had their land purchased at exorbitant prices, in order to destroy evidence that such drastic action had occurred. 

But those spaceships had started disappearing roughly three months beyond the moon. Probes sent to investigate found a vast field of debris. The ceramic and metal hulls had been torn apart. There were no bodies. It had been something of a mystery for half a year, until enough images had come back to allow for a forensic reconstruction of several ships. They found a fifteen-meter-wide bite mark. That had ended the exodus fairly quickly, followed by a massive uptick in the funding of environmental restoration technology. The world was still a filth heap, but at least it was slightly less lethal than before.

There was hardly time to dwell on smog or its history before Jack arrived at the shop he was looking for. A faux-wood sign hung in front of the standard digital display: “Negus’s Holistic Healing.” The nephilim paused briefly as soon as he opened the door, undoubtedly from the many odors striking him all at once. Such a strong reaction probably meant that there were real goods inside. Synthetics rarely carried so much depth.

A man with a red beard and bushy eyebrows tinkered with a mortar and pestle behind the counter. His thick glasses were absolutely for effect, since technology had long ago made those lenses obsolete. The dirt on his hands that he seemed oblivious to was disheartening.

Sam absentmindedly sprayed his own hands with disinfectant before pulling up the mugshot from the case file, then told Jack, “That’s our guy.”

Jack approached the counter, drawing the attention of the man. Rather than starting off by asking for a specific product, he swiped his dummy watch over the reader. Seven enticingly large fake lines of credit flashed on the seller’s screen, indicating that he was either an optimal business partner or mark. It hardly mattered which one he was mistaken for as long as he got what he wanted.

“I‘m looking for some rare goods,” Jack informed the man as he pulled a slip of starch paper from his pocket and handed it to the shopkeeper. The slip contained a small, handwritten grocery list totaling just under three human endocrine systems.

The grisled-looking man reviewed the list, then glanced back at the display where the balances of the fake credit accounts were listed. He dropped the note into a glass of cloudy green liquid, dissolving the delicate paper in less than a second.

“$80,000 for the whole list,” the shopkeeper offered.

Sam quickly consulted the briefing notes that he and Kesi had prepared earlier in the week, then said over the comm, “Market rate is $50,000.”

Jack chuckled a bit and shook his head, before countering, “$40,000.”

“You’re kidding.” The man fidgeted a bit, possibly offended. “$70,000.”

“$45,000.”

The merchant narrowed his eyes, then repeated, “$70,000.”

Sam studied the stern confidence on the man’s face before suggesting, “Go ahead and press for intel.”

Jack made a little show of rapping his fingers on the faux-wood countertop while thinking. “Do you move this sort of product regularly? Maybe I’ll feel differently if we could set up monthly transactions. I would pay more for the peace-of-mind of not having to shop around. But I’d need to know you can handle that.”

A small smile of pride spread across the man’s lips. “My books are in order and not only do I have the inventory, I’ve got the turnover to keep it fresh.”

“He’s gotta be sourcing food for terrans,” Sam speculated into the comm. Earth-native monsters routinely sought out human body parts to feed on. “I don’t even remember the last time we had a witch.” 

His own curiosity led him to open up their case log. Their last witch hunt had been almost three years earlier. Spells were just getting harder to pull off, and as much as it helped to have the old-fashioned ingredients, drawing that kind of energy out of the world wasn’t as easy as it used to be. In the last twenty years, more and more he’d find out about witches, not because of their successes, but instead through the lethal failure of the now-volatile state of magic in the region. The city had grown mundane and any halfway-intelligent witch had certainly moved on to more hospitable territory long ago.

As Sam closed the case briefing, an alert popped up on the screen at the same time that the shopkeeper checked his watch. The bounty on the man had just hit the public market, and it certainly seemed as though he had received a notification.

Sam quickly told Jack, “Don’t react. Alerts just went out that there’s a $35,000 reward on Negus.”

The shopkeeper watched Jack with a new tension in his posture. One of his hands slowly moved under the counter, possibly to grab a weapon.

Sam held his breath at the turn. There wasn’t time to mobilize Shae or Kesi to go provide support. He hastily tabbed open the emergency services channel, though he hesitated to file a ticket with the police. The cops could get to Jack within three minutes, but that would entangle the soulless hunter with a shop full of body parts and he’d inevitably face questioning cut off from Sam’s help.

“Business as usual,” he told the nephilim.

“Are we including the cold storage in the price?” Jack asked in his most innocent, oblivious voice. When the man kept cautiously staring at him, Jack continued. “I don’t need extra storage for this order, but I get really bad intestinal cramps that can last for days. It’s just everything is stopped and then I might as well live in the bathroom—“

“I get the picture,” the shopkeeper said, raising both hands in disgust.

“Actually,” Jack interjected before the man could get into negotiating another aspect of the fake deal. “Do you have anything that might help with that?”

“Well, let me see.” 

Negus turned around to look at a row of cabinets behind him. Before he stepped out of range, Jack pulled a stunner from his jacket pocket and jabbed it in the guy’s back. The man let out a warbling squeak as he crumpled to the floor.

“I’m surprised this one had a bounty,” Jack told Sam as he circled behind the counter and crouched down to examine the unconscious shopkeeper. “No one was even murdered.”

“He traffics organs; lots of people were probably murdered somewhere up the chain,” Sam reminded him.

The family routinely used fake money for superficial transactions or ones that wouldn’t face much scrutiny, but for things like paying the utilities and property taxes, they needed currency with a digital paper trail. That meant occasionally running jobs for a fee, including old-fashioned bounties. The whole thing was an unfortunate aspect of living with one foot on the grid. They were in the city, eventually someone would notice if their credit was entirely smoke and mirrors.

Jack looked down at the body, then spoke into his mic. “Alive or dead.”

Sam stopped himself from sighing over the open comm channel.

Jack tried to make the ethical choice that he believed Sam would make when it came to morally conflicting moments, but any new scenario threw him a bit. Hell, sometimes he didn’t even recognize that there was an ethical decision to be made. Despite his best efforts, it was hard to distinguish one ethical choice from another. Knowing how much weight to give any random factor felt arbitrary. It was a form of math he couldn’t do in his head, so he relied on his calculator.

The bounty was the same either way, but Sam liked to mitigate the amount of hired killings. “Alive.”

When Jack started to handcuff Negus, Sam leaned back in his chair and buried his face in his hands. In a matter of moments, he had gone from fearing for Jack’s life to dissuading him from casual murder. He slowly looked down at his watch. It wasn’t even lunchtime.

* * *

Sam was sitting at a workbench in the base’s armory, sharpening the cutting edge of a silver knife. It was normally a job for one of the kids, but they had all somehow slipped out on errands or missions, leaving some of the housekeeping undone. In theory, he was just as capable as anyone else at the task. He just had some old habits from when he was ill. During that time, he had tried to avoid everything with a sharp edge. He wasn’t nearly as prone to bleeding now, but he still wore heavy crafting gloves while he worked.

“Sam, you around?” Dean’s voice echoed slightly as it carried across a speaker in most of the rooms, searching for his brother.

“Yeah. I’m in the armory,” he replied. “You okay?”

The camera in the upper corner of the room adjusted slightly, settling on Sam. The armory was one of the few rooms in the base where they hadn’t yet installed a screen. Giving Dean a platform to manifest in a visual way was generally appreciated all around, but smaller rooms often lacked free wall space. Eventually, they’d pull a shelf off the wall and install a display. For the moment, Sam would have to make do without being able to interpret body language.

In a slightly embarrassed voice, Dean answered, “Just lost track of things.”

Without looking up from his work, he asked, “Anything I can do to help?”

“What’s the time and date?”

Sam didn’t suggest that his brother could simply consult the clock running in his computer. Sometimes things were confusing and if Dean had a simple enough question, it was best to humor him. He glanced at his watch before answering. “3:23 pm on October 12th, 2078.”

“Is….” There was a moment of hesitation. “Is Kesi around?”

“She’s helping Jack interview witnesses.” Sam put down the knife and looked up at the camera. “You need me to check your AI or is something bothering you?”

Dean exhaled a self-conscious chuckle. “I think it’s been a week or two since breakfast. My, uh, time is a little off.”

A bad feeling started growing in Sam. He could hear the concern in his brother’s voice. “Why’d you hesitate when you asked about Kesi?”

After a few seconds, Dean said, “I… I was worried you’d ask who Kesi is.”

“Alright, we’re restoring your system,” Sam told him as he took off his gloves, then got up from the workbench. “I’m pretty sure we have a good saved state from a few days ago. You won’t lose anything important.”

As he walked out of the armory and down the hall, he caught glimpses of Dean’s image following him, drifting from monitor to monitor, turning on and off lights in rooms as he went.

“How many times have I been restored this month?” Dean’s voice was jumping between three different speakers in a disorienting Doppler effect.

“This is the first time.”

“It’s not even halfway through the month.”

Sam found it comforting that Dean was at least able to remember the earlier conversation. “I’ll check our records, but I don’t think you’re getting worse. It’s not as bad as you think.”

“I’ve just got this feeling that I know things are wrong.”

“That’s why you have us,” Sam assured him as he logged into the admin account and began working his way through the numerous security measures. He nearly had full access when Dean derailed him with a question.

“Is Cas dead?”

It broke his heart every time he was asked that. Shame and countless worried thoughts welled up in him, but he clenched his jaw while trying to keep himself composed for his brother’s benefit.

“We don’t know.” Sam realized that he’d stopped typing in clearance codes, then started up again. “Just try not to worry. I’ll run the restore in just a few minutes and then you’ll start feeling better.”

Dean’s face entirely lacked its normal lightheartedness, even the false ease that he’d put on as an act. He knew that something was wrong with him. The state he was in was temporary, but that didn’t lessen the feeling of vulnerability— and they were both uncomfortably aware of it. He just waited there, uncharacteristically quiet, probably hoping to not embarrass himself with a question or statement that didn’t quite fit.

Before activating the restore protocol, Sam did a quick check of Dean’s activity log in order to make sure there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. He paused for a moment, struck by a painful discovery. The night before, Dean had spent almost ten hours playing through a memory or fantasy of braiding Kesi’s hair when she was six years old. Sam watched a few seconds of the flickering, unstable video before returning to the log directory.

After taking a moment to summon his courage, he ventured into the potentially-unwelcome topic. “Do you want me to offer to braid Kesi’s hair?” 

Sam had never studied how to treat natural hair to the same extent that his older brother had, but he’d watch more tutorials and make a novice’s attempt in order to help comfort his family.

“She doesn’t wear it like that anymore,” Dean replied.

He didn’t have the heart to point out that she’d only stopped after he had died.

“You just have to ask if there’s anything you want me to do.” It felt odd to give the reminder of the standing offer shortly before erasing that stretch of Dean’s memory.

His brother had always been very hands-on. He’d hugged the kids regularly. When they were little, he’d give Shae and Kesi piggyback rides and play tag with them— making up for all the things Sam couldn’t do himself. 

Now his brother was without a body, partially through chance and partially through choice. In theory, they could try loading Dean’s support AI into a robot, but that kind of hardware was unreliable enough that, when combined with Dean’s already delicate state, it just didn’t seem worth the risk. He was safer in the base, anchored to a secure system, around familiar people and places. There were too many variables, too many unknowns.

“Do you think she’s happy?”

Sam hated getting that question almost as much as being asked what had happened to Castiel. It was hard to imagine someone being delighted by the state of the world and their lives in particular, but she didn’t seem to be depressed by any means. She probably just didn’t know any better.

“Yeah. She seems good,” he replied while getting back to the restoration.

After a few seconds, Dean asked, “Am I real?”

“Yes,” Sam replied, fighting through his own exasperation and pity. His brother had started spiraling. “You’re real. You just get confused sometimes. You’re a ghost, but you’ve got yourself hooked up with the AI to help keep you sane. It gets a little hard for you sometimes because you interact with both the AI and us.”

“But how do you know I’m real?” Dean paused a beat. “What if I’m not real and you’re the one interacting with the AI?”

Sam ran his fingers through his hair. He’d had that conversation at least forty times before and still didn’t have a good answer to that question. The truth was that the line between Dean and his mental life-support had blurred a long time ago. They all just tried not to let him know that, lest it give him an even more valid existential crisis.

“You’re real, Dean. We can monitor your ghost when we’re restoring the AI,” he lied. “You’re just asleep while we’re doing it and we don’t like scaring you when you wake up with randomly telling you that you aren’t actually a figment of your own imagination. Okay?”

Dean blinked a few times as he processed that explanation. “Oh… okay.”

Sam started up the restoring protocol. The shutdown procedure would take a minute or two before Dean would be briefly offline. Rather than leave an opening for his brother to ask even more confused questions and get worked up, he decided to fill the time.

“Hey, Dean,” Sam told the computer. “Can you sing something while we’re waiting? Or tell a story. I want to make sure your responsiveness lines up with the normal shutdown procedure.”

“Fine,” he replied. “But I’m not a fucking jukebox. I’m not taking requests.”


	3. The Case

Sam was sitting at his desk, scrolling through data tables of missing persons reports over the last three weeks. There were still cases out there that didn’t come with a fee attached, even if it felt like the world had forgotten that. He missed the clarity of those jobs. Everything had become muddied, and wading through the mess to find those no one else would look for felt like it was getting harder.

“One of these nights I’m gonna put you back in that wheelchair and make you go to dinner by force.” 

He looked up just as Shae placed a bowl of stir fried noodles with a few types of protein and vegetable strips on the desk in front of him.

He took her hand, giving it a light squeeze. “Sorry. I lost track of the time.”

“I know.” She sat down on an old computer tower. “You don’t have to put in eighteen-hour days. When was the last time you did something you enjoyed?”

He picked up the bowl and took a bite. She was easily a better cook than him. “I’m enjoying this.”

“Then how about tomorrow we do this in the kitchen—“ She tilted her head toward the monitor displaying the data tables. “—away from all the crime statistics.”

He nodded in agreement while continuing to eat the offering. Shae smiled knowingly at the appeasement. Rather than returning to whatever else was on her to-do list, she sat with him while he ate. She regaled him with a smattering of observations from her grocery run. It wasn’t clear whether she was genuinely intrigued by the concept of purchasing live seafood or if she was desperately grasping at small talk. He didn’t bother questioning her too hard, for fear of breaking whatever illusion she might be attempting to construct. It was appreciated either way.

Sam was finishing up his meal when his watch tapped the back of his wrist to indicate that a new message was waiting for him. He gestured to Shae that he needed to check something. When she paused, he asked, “What is it, Aila?”

The AI replied, “Incoming message from Detective Kohli.”

“Read it.”

In a close approximation of the detective’s voice, the watch said, “I’ve got something to run by you. I’ll be at my desk until ten o’clock tonight.”

After fifteen years, she knew him well enough to have confidence that he wouldn’t pass up even such a vague invitation. He sighed, then looked at Shae apologetically.

She briefly rested her hand on his shoulder as she collected the bowl from him. “It’s okay, Dad. Go to work.”

Sam glanced down at his slippers and quietly groaned before getting up and making his way to his bedroom. He switched from his casual clothes into his charcoal grey suit and dark blue button-up shirt. It wasn’t exactly the same cut as one of his old Fed suits; modern sensibilities had narrowed the lapel. Thankfully, the trend of darker color palettes meant that he could wear fabrics that didn’t allow his tattoos to show through his dress shirt. He didn’t bother with a necktie. The goal wasn’t to impress or impersonate someone. He was being brought in as something of a consultant, for his actual expertise.

He grabbed a long, heavy overcoat, and slipped on his black leather gloves that were treated with an antiviral and bacteria-resistant oil. The gloves had been a much-needed gift from Dean, back when he was sick. At the time it had been wishful thinking to imagine him out interviewing witnesses while still struggling with his illness, but now they were a prized possession. The function was very much appreciated by a slight germaphobe like himself, and it was a sentimental token from his late brother.

The family owned two cars and a motorcycle, but he never bothered driving to the police station where Detective Kohli worked. There was a subway stop only a few blocks away from both locations. As much as he was currently in the mood for the walk to and from the metro, he did need some exercise. Anyway, driving to the police station would take nearly twice as long because of traffic and the fact that he’d take a detour to avoid a particular neighborhood full of bad memories.

He took the service elevator up to the ground floor, made his way through the ugly yellow-tile lobby, then popped the portable respiratory filter into his nostrils before stepping out into the evening. The air was chill and dewy, as expected for the third week of autumn. His eyes casually scanned his surroundings for threats, either in the form of a monster springing from the shadows or less exciting dangers. He walked wide around a patch of slick green-black algae that had spread from the bottom meter of an exterior wall, onto the sidewalk. That stuff was a damn slipping hazard, even if it helped clean the air.

Despite the fact that the metro stations and tube system were sealed, protecting them from pollutants, Sam still left his filter in when he arrived. Hundreds of thousands of people used the subway every day. Not only was it a breeding ground for airborne illness, it was also a prime target for a chemical attack…. Granted there hadn’t been a major terrorist attack in almost a year, but that didn’t mean he was about to abandon the preventative measure.

He held onto the metal pole running along the ceiling of the subway car. Three other passengers pressed against him, but there wasn’t much to be done. They were all crammed in there. At least he didn’t have a wallet to get pickpocketed; there were some perks to everything being digital.

He was also grateful that he wasn’t carrying a weapon. It’d been a decade or so since he’d been armed in his day-to-day activities. He didn’t go out into danger the way he used to. In all probability, he could still fight better than an average person, but it was incredibly rare that hunters fought the average person. More and more he was making his biggest contribution from his desk. He was an analyst 90% of the time, only picking up a weapon when the kids needed that extra in-field support.

The police station he was going to didn’t have direct access to the metro station, so he ascended the escalator with the mob. He glanced at his watch and immediately recognized that a fair percentage of the people around him were probably on their way to or from a shift change. It was nine at night; the second life of the city was about to start up. There were fair odds that Shae was grabbing her coat and metaphorical keys at that very moment.

Scattered in the crowd were a few garishly vibrant retail uniforms. A group of twenty-something-year-olds in tight suits and dresses (that were at least partially painted on,) were talking about the latest hot club. Sam tried to eavesdrop, on the off chance that he recognized the name from one of Shae’s brief stories. Unfortunately, they were speaking too quickly and using slang that he wasn’t familiar with.

His eyes kept catching small movements and details that left him uneasy. A hand slipping into a jacket for what might be a concealed weapon. A woman glancing around, looking at the locations of all the security cameras. Thankfully, none of the club-goers were wearing inhumanly decorated contact lens, potentially distracting him with threats that weren’t really there. Nothing came from all his anxious watching. No one tried anything nefarious. He let out a small sigh of relief as he walked out onto the sidewalk and continued on his way.

The sleek black building containing the police station was covered in a layer of filth. Smoke, dust, and rust particles had caked onto its diminutively poxed surface. Hardly any corporation bothered cleaning the exterior of their buildings. It was a never-ending battle against the elements, and only fools lingered outside longer than they had to. He took a moment to steel himself for dealing with the various aspects of the police, then pulled the small respiratory filter from his nose, tucked it into his jacket pocket, and entered the foyer.

* * *

Sam tried to appear as unremarkable as possible while he sat in the waiting area of Precinct 92. The last thing he wanted was to get dragged into small talk where someone might ask him why he was there. He watched a dozen cops pass him with barely a glance to assess him as a threat. The way they carried themselves, he was fairly sure he could take any two of them in a fight, but no more than that. Not that physical prowess mattered match when the apparent-rookie had failed to securely clip in his pistol. At least the damn thing was safetied.

Overall, he didn’t like dealing with the police. It hadn’t been so bad while roaming the country, adopting different identities. The stakes were higher now that he lived in a single place and people knew his name— Well, they knew the name Sam Campbell. He was fairly sure that whatever file existed on him wasn’t particularly insightful beyond the fake name, post office box, and, buried below security clearance, a list of cases he’d worked as a hunter.

Sam idly shifted in his seat, then looked at the empty coffee table in front of him. What was the point of having a coffee table if there weren’t any refreshments and print magazines had stopped being a thing decades earlier? He pinched the bridge of his nose at the thought. They were in one of those awkward transitional periods where culture wasn’t quite keeping up with technology, resulting in things like ugly, purposeless furniture. He wanted to put his feet up on it just to spite the endless march of time.

Two policemen escorted a man in handcuffs through the waiting area. The detainee had unprofessionally-done black tattoos of tentacles all over his face. To no one in particular, he shouted, “Eat the rich!”

Sam subtly tilted his head in polite acknowledgment of the sentiment, but stopped himself from doing anything that might be seen by the cops as encouraging or inciting the man. As much as he disliked those cephalopod worshippers, he had to admit that he didn’t mind their stance on wealth inequality. It had been incredibly alienating to have so many of the super wealthy abandon their fellow man. At least them presumably being devoured by a giant space monster allowed for the revival of that old punk rallying cry from Sam’s youth.

After a few minutes, Detective Juneeta Kohli came out to fetch him. She had warm umber skin, chestnut eyes that were set off by laugh lines, and long hair that had once been black, but accumulated significant stretches of silver over her forty years on the force. 

Leaving her artificial left forearm and hand uncovered by synthetic skin had to be an intimidation tactic. Every time he accidentally touched her metal hand while handing something to her, he wondered how many people it threw off guard. He’d never asked her how she’d gotten it, but suspected it had something to do with the fact that she primarily worked a desk and crime scenes rather than patrolling. As far as he was concerned, she seemed fairly well put together, though that kind of trauma could easily leave unseen scars or merely create doubt in others about her capability. He understood that better than most.

While following her to her office, he noticed a group of five men and women discussing something quietly in a cryptic pidgin. They were wearing light body armor, marked with a stylized image of a falcon. There was no doubt in Sam’s mind that they were private security or paraservices, in the employ of a wealthy individual or corporation. As much as the police served the public, it was common knowledge that a little extra money had a way of buying limited access to active investigations. He hated the idea of hired goons stomping around crime scenes, potentially employed by parties with ulterior motives, though it was hard to argue that he had authority. The only reason he was there was because years ago Juneeta had figured out that he was somewhat equipped to handle things that go bump in the night.

She opened the door to her cramped office, inviting him inside. He took the seat across the desk from hers as she increased the opacity on the interior window facing the cubicle-filled floor. With a bit of privacy established, she poured two mugs of sea brew, handing one off to Sam—black, the way he liked it—then sat down at her desk.

“Someday you’ll have to tell me your secret,” she muttered while blowing on her drink to cool it down. “Somehow you look even younger than last time.”

“You wouldn’t believe me.” Taking medication that tricked his body into being less human seemed an unlikely option for another person’s casual cosmetic routine.

“Sam, I’m almost seventy,” she replied. “I’ll try anything short of ritualistic murder.”

He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he was at least twenty-five years older than her. “You’re beautiful as always.”

She smiled at him, then leaned back in her chair and sipped her cup of sea brew. He didn’t feel embarrassed or rush the moment. Instead he looked at her with sincerity, letting her take the compliment. After a few seconds, he picked up his mug and had some himself.

“I wish we didn’t have to meet under circumstances like these,” she sighed as she pressed her remaining thumb to the print reader on the side of her desk. The top surface illuminated, ready to provide data on the cases.

“If we didn’t have dead bodies to talk about, you’d find me incredibly boring,” he replied.

“I find that hard to believe.” She tapped through a handful of directories until she found the case files. Dozens of documents, reports, and crime scene photos popped up below their mugs. Front and center was a photograph of a woman whose head had nearly been removed but for the front of her throat, lying face down in an alleyway. “Maybe boring would be nice?”

“Oh, to know what boring is like.”

Juneeta tilted her head to the side in acknowledgement, then pulled up a folder containing photos of the woman. They worked their way through the 3D mapping of the crime scene, the medical examiner’s report, and the interviews with family and friends. The way that the neck had been cut and pieces of flesh removed was a bit odd, but it didn’t really scream “monster.” The flesh that had been taken wasn’t even particularly valuable on the organ market.

“Tragic, but I’m not sure this is my kind of case,” he told her apologetically.

“Actually, the second vic is why I called you. The medical examiner nearly had a stroke when she saw the MRI.” Juneeta started pulling up frames from the scan. “I thought you might have some ideas.”

The images of the interior of the fingers showed subcutaneous claws, nested in the bone. It was a classic feature of at least four predator-class monsters he could think of off the top of his head. He touched the desktop monitor, pinching and rotating it to study the shape of the claws. Correction: he could think of three species that might fit.

“Any other features?” Sam asked.

“The teeth,” she answered while pulling up the next set of scans.

He knew the tooth pattern as soon as he saw it. “The vic was a werewolf.” Zooming in at the size and alignment of the teeth, he added, “And they were probably young.”

“He. Victim was male,” she clarified. “We don’t have an ID yet.”

“Nonhumans are undocumented half the time, especially if they’re purebloods,” Sam said as he pulled up the photograph of the victim’s face.

Young was right. His features were soft below the sickly, exsanguinated skin. Dried blood and filth from another alley had matted his shaggy brown hair. There had been bleeding in the whites of the eyes, creating red halos surrounding his dark brown irises. The image made Sam wince inside. Pureblood or not, he had been someone’s kid.

Juneeta continued, “The ME guessed between sixteen and nineteen— before she realized he wasn’t human.”

“That’s probably the right range.” He shook his head, disappointed by the discovery. “Maybe even younger.”

“Still waiting on the restorative bloodwork to come back. There was enough decay and contamination, apparently it was a mess.” She shrugged apologetically.

He raised an eyebrow at the image of a nearly decapitated minor. “Well, regardless, you aren’t lacking for ideas on the cause of death.”

“Any thoughts?” she asked, searching for any help she could get. “Once we blow off the whole werewolf thing, us non-hunters can look for a serial killer. I’ve got four rookies running down all the typical stuff, but we don’t know what you do. So what completely insane ideas are never going to cross my mind?”

“Completely insane ideas….” That was apparently one of his primary contributions. “With a serial killer MO, we’re usually looking into a terror,” he mused aloud, though he didn’t feel particularly confident with that assessment.

She somehow managed to furrow her brow while also raising an eyebrow. “A terror?”

“It’s a type of vengeful spirit— ghost,” he explained. “They thrive on fear and like to perform elaborate killings, usually with a calling card.”

“A ghost with a flare for the dramatic?”

“Basically.” He absentmindedly rubbed his fingertips along his dry lips.

“You don’t seem convinced.”

“Ghosts are rare these days.” He tried to figure out a simple enough way of conveying the unusual environment that was throughout the city. “Otherworldly entities benefit from a critical mass of creatures like them and other forces. Magic begets magic. A few decades ago, the supernatural ecosystem became unbalanced and a lot of ethereals started disappearing—“

“Ethereals,” Juneeta repeated, a bit surprised to hear the word. “Marquez’s task force has that word plastered all over their analytic mapping wall. Those space-monster-worshipping cult nut-jobs throw that word around like they’re getting royalties.” She glanced at the interior window, possibly checking to see if the prisoner with the tentacle tattoos was nearby. “Don’t tell me the fucking space monsters are real too.”

“I don’t deal with out-of-state nonhumans; outer space is way out of my jurisdiction,” he replied. “Ethereal just means a non-native to Earth or something that isn’t flesh-and-blood in a traditional sense. Werewolves are native, so they’re terran; demons are from Hell, so they’re ethereal.”

He hesitated a bit at his own example. Shae wasn’t from Hell. She was a creature of flesh-and-blood. She was born on Earth— granted, through unorthodox means. And yet she was partially demon, even if the family rarely brought it up. It was complicated, an uncomfortable grey area that thankfully hadn’t yet factored into a hunt. Beyond his family, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard of a hybrid that might cast the tribalistic politics of the supernatural world into turmoil.

“Ghosts are ethereals because they’re technically between two planes— maybe on an overlapping one. It’s called the Veil,” he continued. “When the ethereal population collapsed, ghosts started having a harder time out there in the wild. Nowadays they mostly have to cling onto some object in order to anchor themselves to this plane.” He looked through the crime scene photos. “A terror would need to have someone helping them in order to get the tethered object from one victim to the other, since the crime scenes were a few miles apart. I’ve never heard of anything like that. It’s possible, just weird.”

“I could’ve sworn everything you dabble in is weird.”

“Weird is subjective.”

Juneeta nodded in agreement. Her standards of normal had certainly changed over the last fifteen years of knowing him. “Do you want a copy of the files?”

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a job where the victim wasn’t human. The fact that the werewolf had been so young pulled on his heartstrings a bit too. “I’ll take a copy.”

She smiled, having accurately pegged it for him, and leaned back in her chair slightly. “For the record, it’s a paying case.”

He let out a long sigh, then said, “For five percent extra, I’ll wear some corp’s ads on my jacket while running the lead.”

“It’s honest work, and there’s no way I’ll believe” —She used the toes of her shoe to kick the worn pair of boots he had on— “that you don’t need the money.”

“They’re comfortable.”

“I know you’re a good guy and you’d work the case for free, but you might as well put in the fee app when you’re done. Otherwise the money’s just gonna go into buying red tape and I know you wouldn’t want that.”

The corner of his mouth curled up slightly. Sam eyed the other cops through the tinted window in Juneeta’s office wall. They both knew that he didn’t trust the police as a whole. Hunters had a cultural wariness towards most authority figures. Meanwhile, the select members of law enforcement that knew about hunters viewed them as something between snake-oil salesmen and bounty hunters— not entirely undeservedly so. 

But Sam’s distrust wasn’t just ingrained habit from the days when hunting was performed completely under the radar. He saw the crumbling integrity of the system. Nearly every time he was at the station, he saw private contractors in the form of paraservice walking around like they owned the place. The bought-access was just the institutionalization of corruption. With money casually passing hands like that, it was hard to tell how biased or dirty any cop was.

She commented, “They stay out of my business. It’s one of the perks of working these small cases.”

“There’s hardly any money to be made in the deaths of a couple no-names,” he agreed, unsure how to feel about that fact.

“Things get complicated the higher you climb the towers. The alleys with those zombie things—“

“Ghouls.”

“—that’s simple. The penthouse scene….” Juneeta shook her head. “I’ll stay out of there.”

He raised his mug slightly, toasting the shared sentiment.


	4. The Missing Pieces

One of the downsides of running cases above-board was the protocols for accessing evidence. Before leaving, Sam had received copies of all files associated with the case where clearance wasn’t required, but that was only a piece of the puzzle. The crime scene where the second victim had been found was still preserved, making it a promising lead. Unfortunately, it was under temporary biohazard containment. The discovery that the victim wasn’t human had caused a minor panic over possible outbreaks, mystical or otherwise. As a known expert on nonhumans, Sam’s identification of the victim as a werewolf would have to be compared to a second opinion before the alleyway would be unsealed. At that point, there would be a very short window when the scene would be available before the public and nature destroyed any remaining evidence. So he was stuck waiting for Juneeta to message him once the containment was ordered to be taken down.

It was a bit after midnight when Sam got home. Shae was out. Kesi was in her bedroom with the door closed. Jack was using the exercise room. Dean was in sleep mode. Everyone was doing something, except for him. 

He had a small mountain of case files to read and brief, while waiting to get the green light on the crime scene. It was a significant amount of work, which he’d eventually share, but it was late and it had been a long day.

Sam tossed the encrypted data card on top of his to-do pile, then walked over to retrieve a large, unlabeled bottle from one of the freestanding metal cabinets. He poured himself a glass of synthehol without any of the flavoring agents designed to mimic whiskey or the various other liquors that the kids didn’t buy. He wasn’t in the mood to savor artificial flavors. It was easier to take the drink for what it was, rather than pretending to find any aesthetic value in it. He took a sip. At least this shit didn’t burn going down.

As he drank, he slowly strolled around his office, examining the oddities that he hadn’t yet organized or thrown away. His eyes lingered on the far corner of the room, where his old wheelchair, crutches, and canes were piled. The canes and crutches had periodically been pulled from retirement to help one of the family after being injured on a case, but that was incredibly infrequent.

The wheelchair was another story. He clearly remembered the day he tried transitioning to crutches. It was agonizing and humiliating. He’d fallen down three times before Castiel and Dean had gotten into a shouting match with each other about whether he should go back to using the chair. Sam had asked Shae to find the five-year-old Kesi and bring her to his room, so that the kids could play a board game with him, away from all the yelling. He had liked to think that it had helped shield them from trauma, but the feeling was slightly undercut by the fall-induced cuts and bruises that had covered his body.

Sam took another sip of his drink, and continued moving through the room full of memories. He stopped in front of the crime board featuring the cold case. His eyes started watering as he stared at the last known photograph of Castiel, caught on a security camera; it was the sort of unceremonious memento left behind by many victims.

“What happened with Cas?” Dean’s voice asked from the speaker on Sam’s desktop as the monitor switched on. “He was here and then he wasn’t. Am I missing time?”

Sam wiped the tears from his eyes under the guise of rubbing his face, then took another drink from his glass.

“It was sudden. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your system.” They’d discussed it several times before, but evidently not during a period of time that was being saved to the primary backup. Maybe the AI was attempting to be merciful. “He went out to investigate a series of missing persons. It wasn’t anything special; it was just another Wednesday.” Sam had to take a moment to fight through the tightness in his throat. “He never came back. We tried everything to find him. It’s been four years.”

It had been devastating. His dear friend and family member, one of the three people who had raised Jack, Shae, and Kesi, was simply gone. Castiel had been one of their best fighters, with the most experience, and something had still happened to him. For months, Sam had nightmares – not only about Castiel disappearing or being killed, but also about the kids. He was terrified every time one of them would go out alone, that they wouldn’t come home, just like Castiel.

Shortly after the disappearance, Jack had asked Sam when they should remove Castiel’s security credentials. With a pang of guilt, Sam had agreed to bar the missing angel’s access to all systems, except for access to the base’s decontamination chamber. If he found his way back, he could at least take refuge just inside. But after about a year, Sam stopped idly hoping that one day Castiel would stumble through the front door.

On the monitor, Dean’s flickering image slowly ran his fingertips along his scruffy chin. His physical appearance might’ve been that of a young man, but his expression or some haggard psychological figment suddenly alluded to a being as old as Sam felt.

“That’s what four years feels like,” Dean muttered. “I remember talking to him. I think it was that morning; I remember every word.”

Sam didn’t know what to say to something like that, so he just nodded. He supposed that was one of the perks of sharing your brain with a computer. When Dean could tell the difference between reality and fiction, he had perfect memory. Granted, maybe that was equal parts curse.

“He wanted to talk to me about something when he got back,” Dean continued. “Something was bothering him.”

It didn’t seem likely that a new lead would be found after so long, but Sam turned to the computer and asked, “Do you think it was connected to his disappearance?”

Dean silently thought for a moment, probably reviewing transcripts, video, or however he perceived the past. He shook his head. For a split second tears pooled in his eyes, but he caught himself and instantly reverted to a more composed exterior.

“I miss him too,” Sam told him, breaking a bit of the tension.

After a few seconds, Dean confided, “Sometimes when I’m dreaming or whatever it is—when it’s really not real—sometimes he’s there. Not when I’m awake, with you, like this.”

“That’s the way the programming is designed.” The synthehol and long day was getting to him enough that he sat down at his desk. “It’s gotta keep you grounded in what’s real, even if it’s painful.”

“I wish we hadn’t fought so much.”

Sam sank a little deeper into his chair at that statement and took another sip. Castiel and Dean had largely gotten along until they had accidentally maimed Sam and created Shae. Their shared culpability over what had happened had created a rift between them. Throughout Sam’s disability and afterwards, they had been known to butt heads.

Dean continued. “He was trying. I know that. We just didn’t know how to help you.”

Sam could feel his shame flare. Everyone had assured him that none of it was his fault, but that hardly lessened his guilt. It didn’t matter that his exposure to demon blood had been involuntary, or that he hadn’t gotten a say in the spell that they’d used. He’d been left bedridden, so disabled that it had taken almost six months before Dean had felt comfortable enough to playfully tease him. It had been so devastating to see their shame and frustration, and for him to be unable to help them help him. All that, and there was a baby he couldn’t tend to himself. He’d put on the best face he could, trying to even incrementally make things better— he still did.

“I know you both did your best,” he replied. “I’m not mad.”

“You’re never mad.”

Sam threw back the last of his drink, then put down the empty glass. “Right now, all I am is tired.” He used the desk to stabilize himself as he got up. “I’m gonna go to bed.”

Messages from Juneeta were flagged to override his do-not-disturb status while he slept. If the crime scene was released in the night, he could deal with his fatigue and sobriety then. In the meantime, he wanted to bury himself in his pillow and turn off his brain.

“Want me to spot you?” Dean offered. “In case you fall and break a hip.”

He huffed an unamused laugh, then waved his hand dismissively. “Aila will send out the SOS if I fall down and can’t get up.”

As Sam walked back to his bedroom, he could see the lights on the cameras he passed turn on. His brother was following him, either out of concern or maybe loneliness. As long as Dean stayed out of his room while he was changing and sleeping, it was fine. It was an unconventional sort of haunting.

* * *

Sam woke up panting, heart pounding, entire body damp with sweat. His head was killing him.

He’d had another nightmare. Shae had been in danger. She’d been walking down a shadowy street alone, tears rolling down her cheeks. Sinister figures followed her, bearing claws and fangs. Shae was running, but an oppressive cloud of black fog poured between buildings, engulfing everything. In an instant she was gone.

“Aila, where’s Shae?”

“They are in their bedroom.”

He covered his face with his hands. It had been a bad decision to mix alcohol with thinking about the dead werewolf kid and Castiel’s disappearance right before bed. His sordid and tragic life had left him prone to nightmares generally, but somehow he still seemed to find ways of inviting them.

His watch was softly chiming on the nightstand, so he grabbed it and looked at the display. Juneeta had sent him a message five minutes earlier; the crime scene was scheduled to be unsealed at the end of the current shift. It was a more advanced warning than he’d expected to get. Unfortunately, he wasn’t personally in great shape to take advantage of it.

Sitting up sent a jolt of pain from one of his temples, backwards through his skull. It throbbed a few times while gradually fading. He put on his watch, then groaned, “Is this a hangover or something else?”

“You appear to be experiencing dehydration resulting from ethanol consumption.” He rolled his eyes at her polite confirmation. “In the future, please keep in mind that you are predisposed to dehydration.”

Sam grumbled quietly at the comment, then winced as he turned on the light. He loaded a fresh syringe and started up the synthesizer. It was earlier than he normally woke up, which meant that he’d receive a lower dose now and either take a smaller maintenance dose late in the day or risk feeling ill come evening. He already felt subpar; it was just going to be one of those miserable days.

After taking his medication, he threw a robe over his pajamas and made his way down the hall. He hadn’t bothered putting on field clothes. Between his mild hangover and the limited serum in his system, he wasn’t likely to go examine the crime scene himself. Anyway, Shae and Kesi needed practice and a recently police-occupied site was one of the safest locations while on the job.

“Shae,” he shouted as he knocked on their bedroom door. “CS is unsealing in an hour.” 

Sam lingered for a moment, straining his ears for signs of life. For a moment he considered asking Aila to verify Shae’s location, then he heard the rustling of bedding and saw light below the door. Satisfied, he continued on to wake up Kesi and Jack.

Breakfast wasn’t anything like it had been the day before. Rather than the leisurely reprieve with the kids, it was a blur. Shae and Kesi both came out of their rooms suited up to look passably like investigators. Kesi copied the case files to her bracer in order to skim the existing intel on the second victim while her cousin drove. The two of them were already pulling out of the garage by the time Jack found Sam in his office.

The nephilim was younger than Sam, but that wasn’t saying much. His sandy blonde hair had almost imperceptibly lightened from a smattering of silver hairs creeping in over the last decade or so. The thought that he looked like an adult felt absurd, partially because Jack was technically sixty-one years old. Unfortunately, he had a slight naivety that seemed to derive at least somewhat from his lack of a moral compass. Innocence wasn’t the right word, no matter if he truly meant well.

Jack placed the newly-filled press of sea brew down on Sam’s desk, then stood at his elbow. “How much longer until they lift the seal?”

Sam glanced at the clock. “Ten minutes.”

“Is there a bounty?”

The question could have either been based on a financial interest or concern for whether there was an incentive for other hunters and bounty hunters to rush the crime scene. On more than one occasion, there had been multiple private parties marching around a scene, trampling evidence and undoubtedly ruining leads. One of Jack’s earliest arrests after moving to the city had been from him knocking an obnoxious private investigator out cold for stepping on and shattering a fang that was in the gutter.

“$5,000 for a fruitful lead. $15,000 for a fruitful arrest,” Sam answered, then decided to answer the inevitable follow-up question. “No reward for a dead human perp. The higher-ups haven’t reviewed the possibility of a reward on a dead nonhuman perp.”

Jack sipped his sea brew while scrolling through their list of open cases. In a curious, nonjudgmental voice he observed, “The pay isn’t very high and we have six other cases. Why’d you agree to dig into this one?”

Sam chose to take that as yet another teachable moment rather than criticism. “I don’t like that the second victim was a werewolf.”

“Nonhumans get killed; just look at the hunter forums.”

“They get killed by hunters, and hunters don’t do that to bodies. Poachers don’t do that to bodies.” Sam absentmindedly tapped his fingertips on the desk. “Twenty or thirty years ago, I’d see a dead wolf and we’d be looking at territory disputes and shaking down every interplanar creature or spiritualist. But things have been quiet since ‘65.”

Jack stared at him skeptically. “You think he was killed by an ethereal?”

“Detective Kohli asked me to shoot from the hip with supernatural ideas. The way the two victims were taken apart the same way, my first thought was a terror.”

Jack sipped his beverage as he ran the scenario over in his mind. The lack of a counter-argument was disappointing, but not unexpected. After several seconds, he muttered, “A ghost killing a wolf.”

They both remembered the animosity that had grown out of the perceived inevitable destruction of the Earth. Just as the majority of the population had been alienated by the wealthy’s attempt to save themselves in lieu of saving the environment, the native nonhumans had resented the way many demons, angels, and spirits could so easily wash their hands of the planet. They had somewhere else they could escape to when Earth became inhospitable; it wasn’t their problem. Such an indifferent philosophy had led to a significant pushback and fighting that occasionally spilled out into the streets. The ethereal population had been impacted by regional changes in the power dynamics earlier, but they had practically evaporated a decade ago. Reigniting that sort of conflict with a dead werewolf youth would be a nightmare.

“I want to know that I’m wrong,” Sam summarized. He opened up the comm channel, then said, “Comm is live. Jack and I are here.”

Shae replied, “We’re just parking now.”

They’d made exceptionally good time, certainly through the violation of multiple traffic laws. He almost told them that it wasn’t a race, but in actuality, there was an urgency.

“Going live with the video feeds,” Sam warned before opening windows to allow for each of their perspectives.

As per usual, Kesi was already wearing her transmitter contact lenses, providing a feed of what she was seeing, but Shae hadn’t yet activated hers. Through Kesi’s feed, he could briefly see Shae’s femme necklace before she turned away. The two of them got out of the car and began walking to the crime scene.

When they were almost there, Shae pulled her AR glasses from her case, unfolded them, then put them on. The video feed popped up beside Kesi’s, though the image was initially hard to interpret. She tapped the frame, syncing it up to her watch before scrolling through its menu. Last time she’d used them for thermal vision functionality. Today she switched it over to overlay EMF readings onto a typical human optical range. She quickly clicked through, authorizing the feed to be recorded, but set a default end to the authorization after three hours.

Kesi stared at her accessory skeptically. “I don’t get why you wear those bulky things. The contacts are way easier to deal with.”

“Because, dear Kes,” she answered in a knowing, playful voice despite the recent abrupt awakening, “I don’t want to have to close my eyes or scroll through three menus every time I want to cut something out of my video feed.”

“I can put a shortcut or an AI on your watch,” Kesi suggested, then chuckled to herself at another idea. “Maybe you can get the ocular lens in your eyeballs replaced with hardware, then you can just go black-eyes to censor the image.”

“I don’t go blind when I’m like that,” Shae replied, a bit offended. In a quiet mutter, she added, “Actually, my vision’s sharper.”

They arrived at the crime scene just as the last quarantine techs were packing up a police cargo van. Shae and Kesi nodded respectfully to the techs, who looked unenthusiastic at the immediate arrival of vultures on the scene. But it wasn’t their problem anymore. No words were exchanged before the van sped off, officially abandoning the site.

Kesi examined the images from the case file on her bracer, then glanced up at her cousin. “Why don’t you have your eyes black on the job more often?”

The question made Sam shift in his seat. He thought about interjecting, either to remind them that other less-open-minded hunters might arrive on the scene or telling them to focus on the job, but Shae replied before he could settle on phrasing.

“You mean aside from the angry mob that would form?”

Kesi’s video feed flicked up abruptly in an eye roll that went unnoticed by Shae. “I meant at home. If it helps you see and there’s no danger—”

“It’s not a big deal,” Shae told her. “Drop it.”

Sam’s stomach knotted at the mention of one of Shae’s demonic features. For the most part, her ability to turn her eyes black went unaddressed in the same way that no one talked about her inhuman strength and her aversion to heavily salted foods. No one wanted to make things awkward by bringing it up, but sometimes Kesi’s compulsion to solve problems got the better of her.

Shae waved her arm in a sweeping gesture, inviting Kesi to take the first crack at the alleyway while they were unhindered by the company of others. “I’ll keep a lookout.”

Being part-reaper, Kesi had slightly different senses than everyone else, making her an invaluable resource when examining dead bodies and the sites of killings. Sadly, other hunters would probably raise their eyebrows at her unorthodox approach. Hence Shae glancing around checking for witnesses.

Kesi walked through the crime scene with her hands extended. She reached out with her senses, trying to discern the patchwork of mortality that existed around them. Kneeling down, she placed her bare palm on the damp pavement where the body had been found. She took a few sniffs, then sneezed and muttered, “Fucking alleriges.”

“Watch out for algae blooms,” Sam reminded her.

Shae started looking around for the slimy green-black fuzz growing in patches in the corners and cracks of the sidewalk, up the shadow-drenched walls. She curiously poked a slick tuft with the tip of her boot, causing it to emit a puff of ozone. “A little extra oxygen never hurt anyone.”

“It’s killed plenty of people, especially when it’s inhaled in a three-molecule configuration,” he corrected. “Either hurry up or put in your respiratory filters.”

Kesi sneezed again before replying, “I can’t smell anything with a resp in.”

Shae looked at her reflection in a nearby window so that she could speak directly to her dad. “I’m assuming the ME ruled out asthma attack as the cause of death,” she speculated with a little shrug.

“Lungs were fine.”

“Please give me some quiet, so I can focus and get out of this shit,” Kesi told them, then closed her eyes and took a few deliberate breaths. Her brow furrowed a bit. “Are we sure this is where the victim died?”

Sam double-checked the file, then answered, “Blood pools when they found the body indicated that that was where he was mutilated. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t feel much of anything.” Kesi’s voice was uncertain. “It doesn’t smell like fear or anger or pain. It’s just empty. I’ve never seen a murder like this.”


	5. The Tech

It only took a day for the next victim to appear. A private security guard had stumbled upon the corpse behind a residential building after accidentally spooking a suspect, who fled the scene. Juneeta had messaged Sam, giving him the limited information she had and letting him know that she’d put him on the list of persons authorized to visit the morgue. Unfortunately, the window for them to actually examine the corpse was fairly tight. Having been documented to the satisfaction of the crime scene investigators and the medical examiner, the next morning it was due to be released for cremation and disposition of remains. A whole bunch of paperwork was bouncing through the labyrinthine network of posthumous bureaucracy; either the next-of-kin would shortly be paying a dozen different transfer fees (accumulating 8% interest), or the ashes would be unceremoniously mixed into some asphalt for filling a pothole. One way or another, the body wouldn’t be taking up space for long.

Given her propensity for dead bodies, Kesi agreed to accompany Sam on the trip. She’d gone with him to the morgue plenty of times before, so much so that she had her own fake ID for the occasion. It was true that hunters didn’t need to maintain the same air of false authority as back when he and Dean had pretended to be federal agents. Back in the old days, Sam had to avoid the appearances that he was working with family because it undercut the cover. Now there was no cover as such, though he still didn’t like the idea of people knowing who his family was. Granted, the majority of his enemies were dead, but he was still terrified that someone might use the kids to get to him.

The two of them got dressed in their moderately professional suits and overcoats, then set out for the station. He would normally take the subway, but Kesi enjoyed driving, and with her joining him, he didn’t feel comfortable suggesting the longer route. It would be too hard to justify taking a detour around an entire neighborhood without tipping his hand.

He took shotgun while Kesi drove them in the Impala. Glancing over at his niece, he could see the ease she showed with it, reminding him of Dean. She had certainly gained a reverence for the car, developed over years of her dad taking her for rides and showing her how to maintain it— even with its extensive retrofitting to meet efficiency standards. Without a doubt, the car was hers above all others, inherited after her dad’s passing. It hardly mattered that his spirit lingered. The leather interior was the closest thing she’d experience to a hug directly from him.

Sam turned and looked out the window for a while as they went, watching the shadows for signs of life— or what might technically be categorized as the undead. As improbable as it was, he could feel tension in his muscles at the thought that maybe something otherworldly was brewing out there. It was a silly idea that was becoming less and less supported by the evidence… and yet, there was something gnawing at him, whispering that there was something sinister in the shadows.

When they drove by a particular plaza filled with fairly recently-constructed towers, he quickly turned his eyes down to his lap. He began counting the fine scars on his hands as a distraction, but his mind started to fill with rumbling static that sounded an awful lot like thousands of tons of concrete crumbling and steel buckling. Slow, deliberate breathing exercises hardly held the unpleasant memories at bay.

“Sam?”

He looked up at his niece’s voice. They were parked in one of the public garages several blocks from the station. She turned off the car, then rotated slightly on the bench seat to face him. A polite smile nearly covered the unvoiced concern on her face.

“I was just lost in old, unimportant thoughts. Nothing bad,” he assured her, then changed the topic to the task at hand. “Do you have your migraine meds?”

She wordlessly pulled a tiny plastic capsule containing a single sublingual tablet from her pocket. “Last time it wasn’t so painful.” Despite the positive spin, her eyes lost some of their twinkle at the prospect of voluntarily walking into a splitting headache. “It’s a lot of input, but it’s getting easier to sort everything.”

“If you need to leave, just tap my wrist,” he told her. “I’ll take care of everything.”

Kesi looked up at him with a sincere admiration that reminded him of when she was little. The memory of him bandaging her scraped knee felt bittersweet. He smiled at her reassuringly, then they got out of the car.

It was normal practice for them to park several blocks away from locations related to cases. That allowed enough time and distance to scope out potential threats, and made it ever so slightly more difficult for their vehicles to get identified. Sadly, it was a pain in the ass— or knees and back, depending on the participants of the outing. Walking multiple blocks in the typical smog and drizzling rain was one thing, but occasionally there were bigger nuisances.

They’d hardly gotten a single block from the garage when the sparse array of lights along the corner edges of the buildings all switched from white to orange.

“Fuck.” Sam barely got the word out before everyone’s watches chimed. 

A harmony of electric voices rose up through the city in unison, announcing: “Flash inclement weather warning. Please seek shelter.” 

They didn’t wait for the details. Sam and Kesi hurried into the lobby of the closest building. With all the ambient noise of people shuffling to seek refuge from the elements, the two of them opted to send written alerts back to the base letting everyone know that they were safe. While Kesi watched the crowd forming in the atrium, Sam messaged his daughter directly to make sure that she was okay. Last he’d heard, Shae was supposed to be at the base, but she regularly ran off on errands by herself. When she replied that she was safely at home, he let out a sigh of relief and could finally focus on the activity around them.

“Imminent tropospheric well,” the alert continued. “Please clear all floors more than 300 meters above altitude standard zero.”

Neither of their watches chimed with an altitude warning, which meant the building they were in thankfully wasn’t constructed on top of a hill, or some other unwelcome surprise.

“Well, this is unfortunate timing,” Kesi commented. “Makes me wish we’d left ten minutes earlier.”

“Then we’d be trapped in the morgue,” he replied as he checked the time. “It’s a little early, but we might as well get some dinner if we’re stuck anyway.”

“Flash inclement weather warning. Please seek shelter,” the digital chorus repeated. “Shuttering in ninety seconds. Seek shelter and clear shutter paths.”

They both looked at the tower’s directory along with the hundreds of other people that had rushed inside with them. The top fifty-two floors were greyed out, presumably because they were above the evacuation threshold. 

There had been a time when he might’ve tried to help evacuate, but nowadays he would only get in the way. He was older and less physically capable. But more than that, the infrastructure had developed for situations like this. None of the elevators would be accessible to him or anyone else on the lower levels. They were all being diverted to transport people out of the impacted area. All the escalators had been converted to downward flow. The building’s security and emergency staff were executing an established protocol. This wasn’t anyone’s first lockdown.

“Shuttering in thirty seconds. Seek shelter and clear shutter paths.”

Kesi tapped Sam’s arm, then said, “They’ve got a sushi place three floors up. Is that okay?”

“Yeah.” He nodded to a nearby stairwell. “Let’s go beat the crowd.”

Massive metal and insulated ceramic shutters descended around the doors to the lobby. Every door, window, and above-ground vent had just been sealed in preparation for a sudden dip in the stratosphere, bringing with it a burst of freezing cold air, which contained too little oxygen for a human to survive. The actual event would only last ten minutes tops, but for up to a few hours following it there would be a recovery period. It was routine for shutters to get frozen closed or systems to crash throughout the city. Sometimes if a large number of people had died in view of a building’s entrance, the management might simply delay unshuttering until after the corpses had been cleared. In the meantime, everyone made do.

It only took forty minutes for them to get a table for two, crammed into a narrow hallway leading to the storeroom. Not a single chair was empty, and a layer of patrons stood behind those seated at the sushi bar. In a particularly savvy move, the restaurant owner offered a first round of synth-diluted sake at 20% off. Neither of them took advantage of the discount since there was a chance they’d be on the case before too long.

Sam stuck to ordering vegetarian rolls for his meal, while Kesi ordered what passed for sashimi nowadays. The protein was all vat-grown, which somewhat undercut the appeal of the platter for her. She wouldn’t be able to enjoy the extra level of pleasure involved in tasting the fishes’ lives and deaths, but at least the mundane flavors were still enjoyable.

She prodded the raw fish product with her chopsticks. “It’s practically a vegetable.”

“There’s nothing wrong with vegetables,” he told her while eating a carrot and pickled radish roll. She certainly took after her dad when it came to her feelings on green food.

“Says you.” She glanced up at him, while holding up a sliver of tuna to prove her point. “These things never had a soul.”

Sam’s eyes flicked around, checking to see if anyone was obviously eavesdropping, but the second round of full-price sake was flowing and nobody gave a damn about them. “It’s not like the soul is in the wild meat when you eat it.”

“There’s an….” She tried to find the right words to explain it. “It’s like an aftertaste. All the soulless stuff tastes hollow. Two percent milk versus whole milk.”

Kesi unconsciously ran her tongue along her teeth. From time to time she exhibited almost predatory behavior. Reapers might not have had a drive to cause death themselves, but Kesi was also half-human, a species well-versed in taking what it wanted. No one in the family was particularly worried about her going on a killing spree to consume souls—hell, if she did, Sam couldn’t exactly be outraged without there existing a level of hypocrisy. But he still tried to keep her grounded.

“It’s all the same milk,” Sam replied, then took a sip of his tea. “Most of the world is synth these days. That doesn’t mean it’s worse; it’s just different.” 

The words felt hollow. He missed many of the little things that the world had lost, but there was no turning back the clock.

* * *

The morgue was technically located in the same building as Juneeta’s office, though it felt like it could’ve been on another planet. It was housed in a secure facility in the lower basement. He’d heard it referred to as “the dungeon,” and he couldn’t really argue with the assessment. The seamless, fixtureless gray walls felt even too sterile for it to be reminiscent of a fallout shelter, though he suspected that that might’ve actually been the case. Many of the skyscrapers throughout the city were built atop blast shelters and fallout storage. That was essentially what their Men of Letters base was, only with a richer history.

The guard outside the actual morgue had her head down and turned slightly away. When she saw the two of them, she held up her hand, then tapped just below her ear, the universal sign for her being in the middle of a call.

“Yeah, Yamagami Spire,” she told whoever she was talking to. “The cold snap cracked a pipe on the roof. Every inch of plumbing in the place exploded.”

Sam double-checked his watch. They didn’t want to be at the morgue when it was flooded with fresh corpses. Luckily, there were safe odds that it would take another couple hours to thaw out anyone who had died incidentally from the cold.

“No, not like the plaza. It’s still standing, but everyone taking a shower or using the toilet— Oh, I know. What a mess.” She impatiently rocked her head back and forth, then finally interrupted the other person. “I’ve got to work. Keep me updated.”

When she nodded to them, Sam handed her his ID and explained, “Samuel Campbell. I should be on the list.”

The woman searched the authorized visitors log, turning up his name in seconds. She eyed him with a wariness that meant she knew what his consultant status actually signified. He was bottom-feeding scum; she was a pawn of the man. Sam smiled at her, hoping to avoid rehashing that trite rhetoric. 

The guard handed him back his ID without comment, then turned to Kesi. “And you?”

“Kessandra Graves.” She held out her fake ID. “I’m his assistant.”

The guard looked her up and down skeptically, but shrugged. She scanned Kesi’s identification, which brought up the dozen or so entries for previous times she’d visited the morgue with Sam. After updating the current log, the guard badged a locked compartment in her desk, then withdrew a small silver envelope and held it out to Sam.

“Detective Kohli left this for you.”

The red plastic seal over the seam of the package would be a pain to open without a knife, so he slipped it into his pocket. Occasionally, he would forget a data card in her office or she’d send an updated card to him through a sealed envelope like that. They were both a bit old-fashioned in their preference for transferring intel physically.

When he was ready, the guard badged opened the eight-inch-thick brushed stainless steel door to the morgue for them. 

As they walked down the short, drab hallway, Sam considered the number of freshly dead bodies that might shortly be arriving, on top of the average inventory. Under his breath, he told Kesi, “You might want to take—”

“Way ahead of you,” she quietly replied while pulling the migraine medication from her pocket and slipping it under her tongue. “Let’s just try to be quick.”

He thought about reminding her to let him know if she was becoming overwhelmed, but decided not to badger her more than he already had. Still, when they entered the repository, he quickly glanced around in an attempt to estimate the number of dead bodies, based on the labeled cubbies.

The medical examiner had been notified as soon as someone with limited clearance had gotten past security. There wasn’t any room for conning her into pulling out a different or additional corpse—not that he’d want her to. They were there to see the damage firsthand and find out if Kesi could detect anything that wouldn’t be documented in an autopsy report. So, neither of them complained about the fact that the victim’s metal slab had already been pulled from its slot in the wall, leaving it waiting for them.

He stared at the third corpse. It was a male victim, not nearly as young as the werewolf, but a more muscular build. The blood loss had turned his brown skin slightly ashen. His head had nearly been severed in the same fashion as the others. 

Sam pointedly asked, “Does the victim have any _unusual_ physical characteristics?”

“You mean is he a monster like the last one?” She huffed a snide laugh. “No, he’s human.”

He didn’t respond to the derogatory use of monster. Regardless, inhuman physical traits were only present in about two-thirds of nonhumans. Modern medicine didn’t have ways of detecting things like angelic grace. Even the chemical changes in the blood of a meatsuit possessed by a demon only lingered for a few hours after the demon had left. Another nonhuman victim couldn’t be ruled out, though the vast majority of terran nonhumans could. 

Now that he was dealing with a case where the victims might not be human, everything had become more complicated. He wanted to go through the process of manually writing out a list of species, just so that he could get the tactile satisfaction of crossing off possibilities as they were ruled out. Sadly, he wasn’t sure if they had any paper at the base. Destroying such an expensive resource just to indulge in tangible progress was probably a bad idea.

“This one was fresh,” the medical examiner continued. “So we managed to get the timeline broken down better than the last two. Vic died between 11am-12pm.”

“I thought the suspect was spotted at 1:13pm?” asked Kesi as she glanced at her bracer to double-check the limited notes they had.

“The mutilation was postmortem. It sounds like the perp was removing pieces when they got scared off by the guard showing up.”

That sounded more in line with a ghoul. Those scavengers tended to get startled when confronted by authorities or threats, even if they didn’t mind the occasional civilian witness. In the dark corridors between buildings, a security guard could easily appear to be a police officer. It might’ve only been blind luck that the perp was compelled to flee instead of staying to finish the job. He nearly cringed imagining the flurry of activity going on throughout the city right now, as ghouls and other opportunists hurried to collect the flash-frozen dead for meals or something else.

“Did you see the field report?” Sam asked. Eventually he’d have to read it himself, but he wasn’t above getting a synopsis beforehand. “Any indication that the suspect was eating the parts they were taking?”

“I didn’t hear anything about that, but if you’re looking for motive, I might have something for you.” 

She tapped on a screen that was built into the slab, then scrolled through video of the autopsy. When she found the part she was searching for, she paused and zoomed in. There was a small piece of metal attached to the victim’s spinal cord. It was a piece of tech, right where the suspect had been looking.

“He had an implant where the perp was cutting?”

The woman nodded at him smugly. “Looking back at the first two victims, that entire section had been cut out.”

“Huh.” Sam shifted his weight, inadvertently taking a step back. He glanced at Kesi, who seemed equally surprised.

“Not the kind of thing you were looking for?” the medical examiner asked, knowing perfectly well that their niche didn’t line up with the discovery. “Well, there’s one more thing that you might care about. His blood was full of broken down cells and strange levels of proteins and amino acids. Toxic is looking it over, reviewing it for poison or venom, but—” She gestured to an ever-growing electronic queue on the wall. “—They’re probably about to be kept busy for a while processing this batch of dead.”

“You’re pulling people from toxicology to tag corpses?”

She tapped a finger on the third victim’s chest. “This is a nobody. If we get a missing person that matches or hear from an upset family member, then he’ll move back up the list. For now, he waits while we dig ourselves out. It’s not like he’s going anywhere.”

“There’s a killer out there,” Sam said through his gritted teeth.

“You think I don’t care?” She certainly seemed to be offended by having a hunter question her humanity or judgment. “If every murder got moved to the front of the line, we’d have thousands of cases vying for first place and everything would shut down. It’s called triage and administration. So gawk at the corpse some more if you want, but in a few minutes I’m gonna be up to my neck in bodies. And you’ll have access to the tox report when we get around to it.”

Without waiting for him to reply, he saw her tap her watch to play some music in her earpiece, then turn around to begin laying out equipment for the incoming wave of dead. He glared at her behind her back, but honestly couldn’t blame her for being annoyed. She was probably facing down a double shift thawing and handling tens of thousands of pounds of human meat. It was enough to make anyone a bit cranky.

Before making their exit, Kesi leaned in close to the mutilated victim. He noticed her nostrils flare subtly as she took a sniff of the corpse, under the guise of looking at some detail. The act of smelling the body made him think of Castiel, who had done that on several occasions. His niece didn’t nearly have the sophisticated nose of an angel, but seeing the similarity struck him. Castiel had been so proud of Kesi— of all the kids. The ache in his chest almost felt heartwarming in a twisted sort of way. At least that was one positive thing gained from their outing.

With so many reapers and dead throughout the city in the aftermath of the tropospheric well, Sam offered to drive them back to base. Kesi sat in shotgun, knees pulled up to her chest, burying her face as best she could in her arms. Every once in awhile she would quietly mutter reassurance that it wasn’t painful, but the fact that she felt the need to repeat it was disheartening. Hoping to avoid the worst of it, he turned on the local news channel and took wide detours to avoid the locations where groups of people had reportedly been killed.

By the time they got home, they were both exhausted. Kesi immediately went off to take a hot shower and bring her sensory input back down to a more normal level. She’d be fine in a few hours, but it was still hard to see how much she was affected by high-casualty events.

Sam went to his room, took off his coat, then pulled the silver envelope from the pocket. He grabbed a knife from the small collection of weapons on the short bookcase, sliced it open, and turned it over. A piece of metal the size of an apple seed fell out onto the top of the bookcase. It was the cybernetic implant from the third victim.

* * *

Sam immediately took the implant across the base to the anechoic chamber. He stepped into the tight entry room lined with various materials designed to block radio waves, soundwaves, and all forms of broadcasts. With the door to the hallway closed, the technological isolation was effective. He opened the interior door to the chamber itself. The walls and ceiling were covered in spikes of black foam, like a recording booth or a packing crate. In the center of the room there was a single desk chair and workbench topped with a computer that was entirely unconnected from the outside world.

He pressed the diminutive metal leads of the implant into the universal chip reader. The monitor illuminated, popping up a window requesting a password to access the code for the implant. He tabbed out of the chip’s user interface and launched a cracker program. Given enough time, the software would figure out the password for the implant. From there, hopefully he or Kesi could determine what the hell the chip was for.

Satisfied that the implant wouldn’t be able to send out any distress calls, he left the chamber. He stopped by the desk in his normal office to clean his hands with some disinfectant, then went to gather everyone for a meeting. They might not know the specific purpose of the chip, but it was still a lead.

After calling the meeting, he went to the library and sat down at one of the tables to wait for the rest of the family. He was running over the facts of the case in his head when he heard something in the distance. At first he thought it might be the electrical hum of a piece of defective hardware, but it had too much of a rhythm to it. He glanced over his shoulder, looking for an obvious source. For a moment, it almost sounded like whispering.

“At every turn, I’m surrounded by incompetence,” a man seethed.

“I promise more discretion, sir,” hissed another voice.

“No,” the first one replied. “Maybe the time for discretion is coming to an end.”

Sam jolted upright in his chair. He looked around startled and confused about the voices and sudden change in the room. Kesi and Shae were now seated at the table with him, and Dean’s face was on the wall-mounted display. Jack walked in carrying a tray with a carafe of sea brew and mugs for each of them. Kesi grabbed one, took a sip, then frantically started blowing on it to cool it down. 

Shae passed a mug to her dad while saying, “You fell asleep. Sure this briefing can’t wait ‘til tomorrow?”

As tempting as it was to wait until the next morning, he didn’t want to leave the family uninformed about the suspicious piece of tech that had been brought into their home. A few too many times an artifact had been left for later investigation, only to carry a curse or be accidentally misplaced by an unsuspecting person.

“Just an update, then I’ll go get some sleep,” he promised before taking a smaller than normal sip of the sea brew.

In order to get everyone on the same page, Sam gave a quick recap of the trip to the morgue and discovering that the implant had been given to them.

“Wait, we have that thing?” Kesi asked, looking around, as though it might spring out from the shadows.

“I’ve got the anechoic chamber’s computer working on it,” he assured her.

Shae’s brow furrowed. “That’s evidence, physical evidence.”

Kesi titled her head from side to side. “It’s tech, so standard protocol is to image all its code and content, then do a 3D scan, documenting the materials. After that it’s basically in redundant physical storage until it’s cleared for recycling. Maybe it just got sent to scrap early and yanked from the pile?”

“Still probably technically stolen,” Shae replied.

“Since when does stealing bother you?” Dean asked from the wall.

“Bothering me? No,” she clarified. “But police don’t look too kindly on stealing from them.”

Kesi countered, “Well, it was a cop who gave it to us—“

“We have it and we’re sure as hell not returning it unless someone comes with a warrant,” Sam told everyone with authority.

He didn’t want to get Juneeta in trouble or become any more entangled with the police. It was a low-priority case, as was made perfectly evident by the medical examiner. The odds of anyone noticing a missing, already-archived chip that was smaller than an earpiece were insignificant.

“Guys,” Jack interjected. “Is this still our kind of case? This is sounding like some sort of cybernetics thing. We do claws, fangs, and hex bags.”

“Not so many hex bags anymore,” muttered Dean.

“What’s a werewolf doing with an implant?” Kesi asked. “Do you think that it was like a strength stim or something else for a combat edge?”

Sam rubbed his face at the unwelcome thought. Thankfully, they didn’t cross paths with werewolves very often, and when they did it wasn’t an extraordinarily difficult fight. Wolves were tough, but they were flesh and blood. Bullets and blades did the job. Altering that would pose a lot of problems.

“Even if this was our sort of case, none of us are doctors or experts in medtech,” Shae countered. “We don’t even have an in with werewolves that doesn’t involve randomly flashing silver in the street. Sitting down and asking them if they’re taking stims or modding isn’t really on the table.”

None of them were ever thrilled about abandoning jobs, though sometimes there were other factors. Occasionally, the leads ran out or there was a red flag from the beginning that scared them off. But it was incredibly rare that they’d start a case and give it up while there was still a thread to investigate. They even had the actual implant, a piece of evidence that gave them a leg up on any other hunters, bounty or otherwise. 

Sam would have to covertly return the chip to Juneeta before too long. He wasn’t looking forward to telling her that he was giving up on the case, but as much as he disliked the thought of that, the conversation was about to get worse.

Jack reluctantly said, “We do know a chemist in the medtech industry, who might know how werewolves are affected or involved.”

Shae and Kesi both glanced between their elders, unsure who was being suggested. The bleak expressions on their dads’ faces were telling. 

Dean let out a dry, humorless laugh. “You can’t seriously think that asking Nima for help is a good idea.”

Sam could feel himself getting heartburn at the mere thought of her. She was from a chapter of his life that he wished would remain closed forever, or at least until all parties involved were ash. He shook his head, adding, “It’s too dangerous.”

“Nima,” Shae repeated uncertainly as the pieces started clicking together. She turned to Sam and asked, “That’s that vampire you used to work for?”

That description wasn’t technically wrong, but there existed about a thousand more layers of unpleasantness piled on top of that foundation. Not that he was about to correct her or elaborate. He had known Nima back when he was high on demon blood and entirely morally flexible. 

The whole thing was painful for those involved and before Shae and Kesi’s time, and as such the two of them had only heard the basics: During the five-week demon-blood binge, Sam had met up with some vampires who were having a territory dispute with some demons. Sam teamed up with the nest, essentially eradicating the demon presence in the city. He had earned an iconic status and nickname among the vampires. Even after the sobriety spell disabled him and he fell off the map, the vampires were still fans of him, resulting in Sam having avoided all things vampiric for the last few decades.

“I didn’t ‘work for’ her,” Sam muttered, a little offended by the characterization. “We had a common... enemy.” He leaned back in his chair, wordlessly signaling to everyone that he wasn’t going on the mission. “Just because, under very different circumstances, we got along, that doesn’t mean that she’s a friend or ally.”

“She threatened to tear my throat out with her teeth,” Dean offered as an example.

“Well, that’s moot now,” Jack replied. “You’re the only one she hates now that Ca—“ He caught himself, then said, “She doesn’t want to kill me. I could go talk to her.”

“I’ll go with you,” Shae interjected, clearly eager to meet the mysterious figure from her dad’s past.

“No way,” Sam said firmly. “Absolutely not.”

“Her nest likes you, right?”

“You’re a—part demon.” Sam flustered a bit at suddenly having to talk about yet another sensitive topic. “There hasn’t been any interspecies fighting since you were born, but it used to be vicious. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything to us that you’re part demon—“

“But everyone else cares,” Shae said, finishing the sentiment she’d heard countless times.

The words struck him as particularly painful, both in the way it clearly hurt her and in its truth. He hated that he couldn’t spare her that stigma. 

“Sam,” Jack spoke, breaking the silence. “Nima knows about Shae and has never tried to hurt her. I don’t think she’s going to risk alienating you.”

“Her threatening to kill Dad isn’t alienating?” Kesi asked.

“In fairness, Dean maimed and almost killed her most powerful ally,” the soulless nephilim replied.

Dean’s face lost some of its lightheartedness for a moment before he switched over to a screensaver of the Impala that he sometimes used when he wanted to let people know he was observing, but didn’t want to be seen himself.

Sam let out a long sigh and sipped his lukewarm sea brew. He could feel the mood of the room shifting to a position that he didn’t like. His support, in the form of Dean, had just suffered an emotional hit, rattling him. Shae and Jack both had visible determination in their body language, as well as a reasonable argument that Nima might not knowingly do anything that would hurt him. Meanwhile, his niece was looking past her mug, deep in thought.

“Does she know about me?” asked Kesi.

“I don’t think so, since you were born years later.”

Kesi nodded at a thought. “I should go too.”

“Baby—” Dean started to object, but she interrupted him.

“We’re going there to ask her about tech; I know the most about tech of anyone here.” She looked from the security camera to Sam. “If we’re gonna go to the trouble of seeing her, someone better be able to speak the same language. I mean, I’ll need a bit to brush up on my biochem and medtech— Wait.” Kesi’s eyes went wide as she sat up straighter in her chair. “Nima, as in Nima Xue? Head of Hemaeon, that pharmaceutical company? That’s Nima the vampire?”

Dean groaned, “If there’s one thing vampires know, it’s bodily fluids.”

An amused grin spread across Shae’s face. “A prescription drug manufacturer— Even if she’s involved with a nest, Hemaeon is too big a name for her to be killing people carefree like some street gang.”

“Fame doesn’t make crime harder,” Sam corrected. “It just makes it take place higher up the towers. Anyway, they’re plenty dangerous, even without draining your blood.”

“We’ll be careful,” she assured him, in a move that didn’t quite constitute asking for his permission.

“One day,” Sam told them. “Give it one day. If we don’t have a better lead by then, go see her.” He got up and started walking out of the library towards his bedroom. Before he was out of earshot he added, “Anyway, she’ll be in a better mood at night.”


	6. Nima

Unsurprisingly, he didn’t sleep well. His dreams were an odd mix of vignettes. Shae and Kesi being chased by vampires and werewolves. Him intoxicated on demon blood, stalking two demons through the dark streets. A boy of no more than twelve spray-painting, “RECLAIM THE MAGIC – TAKE BACK THE NIGHT” onto the side of a building. Swirling smoke and fire, engulfing the city as countless people screamed. A ridge of fangs dragging lightly along his throat before the lips gently kissed his flesh.

He took a cold shower that morning. The chilly water made him wonder what exactly had happened to the people in Yamagami Tower, but the mental images it formed didn’t dissuade him. Afterwards he grabbed enough caffeine and calories to get him through the day and began desperately looking for a better lead than Nima— to no avail. 

When sunset came around, he watched from his desk at home as the kids approached the building where Nima worked and lived. The dimming sky brought out the many brilliant lights throughout the downtown. One of the towers in the vast sea of smog pulsed with red light, illuminated by decorative exterior lighting in the shape of an inverted cross. It kept time with the heartbeat of someone that was far too calm to be trusted.

A doorman in a sleek black suit and a compact respiratory filter nodded to them, wordlessly indicating that he needed to speak with them before they would be allowed entry to the luxury building.

“Good evening,” he greeted them. “Do you have an appointment?”

“No, but if you could inform Nima that Jack Kline would like to speak with her, I expect she’d want to meet with us.”

The doorman’s brow furrowed a bit, either confused by the forwardness of this interloper’s request or by the fact that he had referred to the head of the nest and CEO of Hemaeon by only her first name. Regardless of the absurdity of the situation, he jotted some information down on a touchpad bracer.

“And your names?” he asked Jack’s companions.

“Shae and Kesi Winchester,” Shae answered for both of them.

The doorman added them to the request, then held the touchpad out to them. Their names were each displayed a bit over an inch apart. “Please make sure your names are spelled correctly, then apply your thumbprint to your name. By providing your print, you waive all claims against Hemaeon and agree to abide by the rules of the house, a copy of which can be provided to you upon request—“

“I request a copy,” Kesi informed him.

The doorman tabbed over on the touchpad and sent a temporary read-only copy of the file to her bracer, then tabbed back and continued. “You will be permitted to wait in the atrium until we can determine whether a meeting with Ms. Xue will be granted. Understood?”

They all nodded agreement. It took a little doing for Kesi and Shae to correct the spelling errors in their names, but after a few minutes all the formalities were out of the way.

In a slightly lowered voice, the doorman told them, “Our atrium features night-blooming foliage, and is illuminated accordingly. Would any of you like a vapor to adjust your vision to compensate for this?”

Over the comm, Sam explained, “If you want to pretend to be human, take the vapor or pretend to stumble around in the dark a bit.”

Unlike Shae and Jack, Kesi didn’t have enhanced vision for the light spectrum, so she said, “I’ll take some of the vapor.”

The doorman uncapped a vial and held it forward. Kesi leaned in and took a deep breath. While everyone waited a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the drug, Sam double checked to make sure that the video feed would automatically correct for any low-light environments. It was a default setting, but he didn’t want a fluke to leave him blind while the kids were walking into that place. By the time he tabbed back over to the live feed, they were entering the grand lobby.

It was common for the Upper Crust to have botanical atriums inside their buildings, acting as both a private collection of delicate, rare goods, and a form of silent competition with the other elite. The nest’s atrium would’ve been an iconic example, if only they allowed the press in to admire it. Six stories of cascading vines and tiered canopies perfectly framed a twenty-foot-tall white and black marble statue of a woman in a delicate gown. The figure held a rapier towards the sky. Two serpents coiled around her raised arm and the weapon, alluding to the caduceus.

Over the comm, Dean whistled, then muttered, “Somebody upgraded since last time we said hello.”

Kesi waited a beat for the doorman to leave them, then murmured under her breath, “How much?” 

After a brief hesitation, Sam answered. “When I knew Nima, their nest lived in an abandoned underground metro station.”

Jack subtly shrugged to Kesi and Shae. “I never saw it.”

Technically, Sam was the only one of them who had seen the handful of decrepit bases where the nest had lived. The others had eventually caught up to him while he was out hunting. They had tried multiple times to bring Sam back home, both voluntarily and through capture. All but the last attempt were utter failures, each ending with him evading the three veteran hunters.

“Maybe don’t be the one to bring up her nest living in rubble,” Sam suggested dryly.

After just over ten minutes, a servant in a white suit with crimson piping came out to greet them. “Ms. Xue requests that you join her on the viewing level for a drink.” He made a sweeping gesture, inviting them to follow him to the elevator. When they were all inside the silvery chamber, he pushed a button marked only with an image of the moon, then looked pointedly at Jack. “Ms. Xue does not allow the blades of angels in her presence.”

“I’m not carrying one and I can’t summon one anymore,” the nephilim replied. The dwindling magic had significantly reduced his angelic abilities. As of six months earlier, he could only just barely heal the most superficial injuries.

The servant smiled thinly at the barometer of ethereal strength for the region. “Very good. She’ll be pleased to hear that.”

The elevator doors opened to an art gallery of sorts. Ebony and birch panels stretched from the jet black floor to a high arched ceiling. Canvases and twisted metal sculptures hung on the wooden panels depicting various members of vampire folklore. Instead of exploring the collection, the servant guided them outside, onto a large white marble balcony.

There was an infinity pool full of blood that extended to the very edge of the platform. A man and woman were in it up to their midbacks, making out. A naked woman sat on the edge of the pool, one leg in the blood, one leg dangling over the edge, watching the skyline.

Where they stood, high above the haze of the lower city, there was an unobstructed view of the night sky. Not a single star was visible, thanks to the ambient light pollution, but the black canvas twinkled with thousands of drones hurrying about. The fact that none of the tiny crafts came within 100 meters of their building, nor were any mobile advertisements pointed at them, was a testament to the nest’s influence. It took considerable connections or money to not have such a pristine view spoiled.

They hardly had a chance to take in the view before Nima walked out onto the balcony. She had incredibly pale skin that contrasted against her asymmetrical small black dress with a left collar that jutted sharply up the entire height of her long, slender neck. Her black hair was buzzed down to almost nothing. She wore four-inch black heels, despite pushing five-ten barefoot. The sight of her, even after all those years, started making Sam sweat.

“Jack.” She gave him a small tilt of her head.

“Hello, Nima,” he replied. “Thank you for seeing us.”

“Unlike some people, you never moved against my nest.” Her lips curled in a feline smile. “And I’m not unreasonable. See? Here we are, talking like peers.” 

She walked right up to the edge of the balcony and studied the jagged skyline. There was no arm rail, just a fall to certain death. 

“I didn’t make you three leave your weapons with security because I expect this to be civil,” she informed them. After a couple seconds she commented, “Between the fines, settlements, lawyers fees, and public relations, it costs $1.4 million to throw someone off of here. $1.9 million if they land on a pedestrian.”

Dean’s voice started fuming with anger over the comm, so Sam quickly muted him from broadcasting out to the kids. His brother had always hated Nima and likely wouldn’t be able to stop himself. The last thing they needed was his seething comments distracting Shae or Kesi.

Jack relaxed his posture a bit at Nima’s threat, but didn’t make any sudden movements. “My team and I wouldn’t dream of hurting your nest.”

“Certainly what’s left of your team,” Nima corrected, then she looked over Shae and Kesi. “These two are new.” She walked over to stand five feet in front of them. Her nostrils flared subtly as she took a deep breath. “They smell like Winchesters, but I don’t detect the stench of Dean or the angel.” She lifted her nose and her smile relaxed as a look of contentment spread across her face at a familiar scent. “Where is the Crujah?”

She was referring to Sam. His status as a creature that drank the blood of demons had been incredibly impressed to the vampires. But his brutal efficiency at devouring the entire demonic population had earned him the reputation of a living demigod. The Crujah was a lesser Blood God, known for battling against the ethereal pantheons. The nickname became a title; the title became a legend. 

He’d killed so many demons that not only did their territory open up to be stolen by the vampires, increasing Nima’s political power beyond measure, it had also critically wounded the supernatural ecosystem of the city. The population of ethereals had dropped below a critical mass, sending spiritual or interplanar creatures and magic into a slow downward spiral. Everyone was still feeling the fallout from his actions.

“He’s around,” Jack replied politely, but not wanting to invite a lengthy, unwelcome discussion.

Nima nodded. “He’s listening?”

“Yes.”

She smiled at the answer, though her eyes held some disappointment. “I suppose it would be unseemly for our organization to become involved with him again. But he’s very dear to us, and always welcome.”

Without waiting long enough to have received a message from Sam, Jack replied, “I’m sure he appreciates the invitation.”

There was an uncomfortable pause. Back at the base, Sam anxiously ran his fingertips over his lips, waiting to see if Nima would react to the candidly insincere pleasantries. She hated people who lied to her, but based on her continued patience for Jack she was giving him the benefit of Sam’s forty-six-year-old assessment of the nephilim as “mostly harmless.”

Rather than address the faux pas, Nima turn her attention to Shae for a moment. “You’re the….” Her lips pursed briefly as she settled on terminology. “Peculiar child, aren’t you?”

“ _ He’s _ my dad,” she acknowledged. She probably didn’t know whether it was appropriate to call him Sam or the Crujah so she avoided naming him altogether.

“You have his eyes.”

Sam shifted in his seat, then said into the mic, “Change the subject.” 

He didn’t want the conversation to be based so heavily on someone who should be a nonentity. More than that, he didn’t want Shae’s similarities to him to catch Nima’s interest.

Nima’s eyes moved almost imperceptibly when he spoke. Evidently her hearing was as good as ever. She didn’t call him out for feeding them instructions, and he didn’t do her the insult of laying out all of her abilities like the subject of a zoology lesson. He’d let it slide. Even if one or more of the kids hadn’t noticed that tell, they all knew well enough not to whisper in the presence of polite murderers with superhuman hearing.

Jack continued, “We’d like to discuss a case we’re investigating.”

“My nest isn’t involved,” she said definitely.

“You aren’t suspects,” he assured her. “We’d like your professional opinion.”

She looked positively delighted at the turn; they were asking for her help. “Of course.”

Nima strolled over to a black, leather loveseat and made herself comfortable. One of her underlings hurried over with a brushed stainless steel tray holding a white porcelain cup full of blood. She accepted the beverage, sipped it, then patted the seat next to her and gestured to Shae. “Come. Sit down, child.”

Sam’s hands trembled with a fight-or-flight impulse for an encounter miles away. He gripped the edge of the desk, but didn’t risk saying anything to them over the comm.

Shae hesitated barely a moment, then approached her. She sat down beside Nima and tried her best to take a respectful, but not frightened posture.

Nima held the cup of blood in her offhand, and reached out with the other hand to pat Shae’s knee. “You don’t have to be afraid of me. Racial tensions aside, we’re still grateful for what your father did for us. Our nest wouldn’t dream of harming a hair on your head.”

“I’m not affiliated with any demons.”

“And that’s quite fortunate.” Nima lightly tucked a bit of Shae’s hair behind one ear. “This world isn’t a place for ethereals anymore. There’s only so much Earth to go around these days.”

“I was born here—“ Shae started to assure her.

“I remember,” Nima said dryly, then sipped her blood. She studied Shae for an uncomfortable moment before looking to acknowledge her other guests. Her eyes settled on Kesi. “You’re a Winchester too. Are you Sam’s also?”

Kesi shifted her weight, somehow taking a more confident and anxious posture. “He’s my uncle.”

Jack took a step forward to position himself so that he could try to intercept any attacks while adding, “He loves her like his own. Dean’s dead; there’s no reason to let what happened affect her.”

Nima sat for a moment contemplating the young woman standing before her. After a painfully long pause, she told Kesi, “It seems my second greatest regret is not being the one to kill your father.”

Kesi’s jaw clenched subtly at the comment, then she coolly replied. “A lot of people would rank that number one.”

Nima smirked. “I’ll bet.” 

Back at the base, Dean snarled, “If I had my fucking hands I would tear her to goddamn pieces.” Thankfully, his voice was sufficiently isolated from the others.

Nima waved a hand at Jack, dismissing the need for his defensive posture. “I won’t kill her. You can pretend to breathe again.” Her hand settled on the back of the loveseat, just behind Shae’s neck. “Tell me, whose bright idea was it to send Dean’s spawn into my home?”

“Mine,” Kesi replied.

“Well, that tracks.”

Kesi’s voice had a sharp edge to it as she explained, “I’m here to answer any questions you might have about the sixth gen, four-track, IPL implant we’re running down.”

Nima was perfectly still for a moment before she took a sip of the blood. She crossed one leg over the other, then idly let the top foot rock a bit as she thought. “I assume you have an autopsy report.”

“Three,” replied Jack.

Kesi withdrew a tablet from her coat, unlocked it, then pulled up the medical examiner’s files and the limited information they already had on the implant. She handed the tablet to Nima while adding, “We haven’t been able to crack the chip yet, so we don’t know its protocols, but I found some intel on the model.”

Nima flipped through the specs, images, and the blood test results for the victims. Without looking up she commented, “This is more advanced than sixth gen, but you wouldn’t be able to tell that. It’s something that isn’t commercially available yet. The manufacturer tags aren’t there, so clearly these were bought on the black market or direct from the fabricator through a custom order.”

“Any idea what it might be for?”

“Definitely some sort of chemical regulation.” She pulled up specific blood panels from all three victims, side by side. “There used to be something very interesting in this blood, but it’s gone now,” Nima observed aloud.

“Someone removed something?” Jack asked.

“Unless blood is run through a filter or touched with magic, you aren’t going to remove a chemical from the bloodstream. It was broken down,” she corrected. “That’s why there’s excess proteins, amino acids, and all the damage. There’s such a mess in here that the compound shredding was clearly a cover up. Tearing apart hormones like that would have poisoned the user in thirty seconds.”

“But that’s not our cause of death,” Shae speculated based on the vampire’s tone and setup.

“The damage wasn’t as much inside the heart, kidneys, and liver.” Nima flashed her pristine teeth in a smile. “The blood wasn’t flowing, so the antagonist agent had a harder time penetrating the organs, even the ones meant to process blood.”

Back at the base, Sam nodded to himself at the hypothesis. He was familiar with the concept of an antagonist agent from his own medical situation. His nightstand and the base’s main first aid kit contained an emergency injection designed to abruptly counteract the effects of his serum in the case of an overdose. The liquid would immediately circulate through his system, annihilating the original chemical cocktail. In theory it would work in a crisis, but the process would be very damaging and was a tool of last resort.

Something very similar had been done to the victims, but the move had been attempted postmortem. With the blood not circulating the antagonist throughout the body, its effect and resulting damage was not evenly disbursed. Obviously, the injection hadn’t been done to try and save the victims’ lives, so Nima was suggesting that it was part of covering up what had actually been done to the victims. That was consistent with the perp removing most of the neck in order to retrieve the implant itself.

“So the implant triggered some kind of chemical to be released into the victims,” Shae said, bringing them back to the issue of the implant. “From this, can you tell anything else about the tech involved? Beyond understanding that there’s a coverup, the composition of the blood isn’t turning into a lead. But if we can figure out who, how, or why from the implant, that’d be incredible.”

“Sadly, child, that’s not my exact area of expertise,” Nima answered, then added, “We do the chemistry and compounds— the artistry, not the blunt hardware. My people wouldn’t dream of hurting the purity of blood like that. Meanwhile others are buying garbage like this to run back-alley mods. It’s disgusting.”

“The purity of blood?” Shae said skeptically. “Your biggest product is synthetic blood.”

“Our products don’t damage the blood cells or any part of the cardiovascular system. And our artificial blood breaks down over the course of three days, turning into fundamental components that support the health of real blood cells.” Nima scoffed at the suggestion that her nest was doing anything like the people responsible for the implant. “Would you rather we hunt? My people are providing a public service, while our past-sires would pick the humans off as prey.”

“We appreciate that your nest is cooperating with society,” Jack told her, causing Sam to cringe.

“Baby angel, my nest is part of society,” she corrected in almost a hiss.

“Jack, apologize to the woman,” Sam instructed over the comm, knowing perfectly well that Nima would hear. The corner of her mouth curled up before she even received the apology.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I spoke carelessly and didn’t mean to insult you or your nest.”

She didn’t respond, instead she returned her attention to the contents of the tablet. They silently watched her read one of the medical examiner’s reports for a few seconds before a mischievous grin lit her face. “That’s a dead werewolf.”

“That’s another part we were hoping to get your insights on,” Shae replied. “We’ve never run into terrans modding before. Is this normal? Does it mean anything to you? Any idea if there’s someone we should talk to runnin’ down this lead?”

“Our nest has hired wolves before for a few unsavory projects.” She finished her glass of blood, then handed it off to the servant. “We’re legitimate now. If one of my people was caught with a body, well, that would be a headache… another headache.” She stared off at the skyline for a moment before continuing. “Wolves are capable enough. They’re affordable. Most importantly, they know how the world really works; they don’t ask questions when you need to dabble in the shadows. If you’re desperate enough to talk to me, then you probably don’t have qualms talking to them. Go see Gregory Blair at the Dire Fang in Old Town— Wear closed-toed shoes.”

A minion approached them and made a small hand gesture that caught Nima’s attention. She stood up from her seat next to Shae and stretched in a way that reminded Sam of a cat.

“I have a meeting that I must get to,” Nima told them, but instead of immediately leaving, she turned to stand directly in front of Shae. She leaned forward, placing her hands on the loveseat, nearly pinning her there as she whispered in her ear, “If he needs fresh prey, we have the means to import some for him.”

Sam clenched his jaw at the mention of his cravings. She had undoubtedly meant it as a genuine offer and sign of goodwill, but he was still livid. It was bad enough to sit there helplessly while she got so close to Shae, but on top of that, the casual, normalized mention of his great shame— he felt nauseous.

“Give your father our best.” Nima made a tiny adjustment to Shae’s jacket collar, straightening it. “And you’re welcome here anytime. Personally, I’d like to see how much you take after him.”

As soon as Nima walked away, Sam muted his mic, then grabbed his mug and threw it at the wall. The ceramic shattered, splashing the remaining ounce of sea brew on the concrete wall.

From the computer, in a thoroughly exhausted voice, Dean said, “We got some intel.”

Sam sunk down in his chair, feeling defeated despite their gains. “We lost more.” 


	7. The Turn

The encounter with Nima had left Sam rattled. His chronic knee pain didn’t stop him from pacing while waiting for the kids to get home. Dean watched him, following him from room to room. When they did arrive, it was clear that they were all feeling uneasy. 

Shae tossed her jacket onto the first clear horizontal surface and went to her room without explanation. Sam took a step to follow her, to see if she wanted to talk about it, but hesitated. Ever since she was a teenager, she’d been more internal while processing unpleasant things. He wasn’t sure if it had been some function of puberty or hunting that had changed her; starting hunting had certainly changed things between the two of them. She’d gone out into a world full of threats and flaws, where for a long time he couldn’t follow her. In a lot of ways, she’d grown to be more like Dean while out in the field, under her uncle’s tutelage. Knowing her, she would take some time to herself before going to blow off some steam out on the town, so Sam let her be.

Jack trudged off to fix himself a strong drink. Overall, he didn’t actually mind Nima. The lack of a soul left them not completely at odds philosophically. Though as the only familiar face to their dangerous host, he’d had to shoulder the burden of diplomacy and protecting the others. All in all, he’d earned a bit of intoxication.

As soon as Kesi got out of the car, she walked over to one of the displays that was touch-sensitive and rested her hand on it.

“You did good, baby girl,” Dean told her as he tried to line up his image on the screen so that their hands were touching.

“I’ve got you,” Sam said to both of them as he pulled his niece into a hug.

Over Kesi’s shoulder, Dean mouthed, “Thank you.”

“She was….” Kesi debated her word choice for a moment. “Very competent for someone who throws people off buildings. I can at least see a little of how you got along with her.”

“Please do not try to think of her in a positive light,” Sam replied. “She’s a killer. We got her insights.” 

“It’s a lead,” Kesi agreed before offering, “I’ll go check on the cracker before bed.”

“Thanks.”

Once Kesi had left, he reflectively redraped Shae’s jacket so that it wouldn’t get wrinkled, then went off to find Jack. He located the nephilim in the library, hard at work on a bottle of synthehol.  Sam poured himself a glass and sat down across the table from him.

“She has all three of your scents now,” Sam commented before taking a sip.

“Do you really think someone like that couldn’t find our base in a heartbeat even without our scents?” Jack swirled his glass. “She’s known that you’re alive for a long time. Maybe the warding on this place kept her away early on, but it’s been essentially nothing for years. I don’t know why she’s never just walked in here.”

“Respect,” Sam speculated, though it felt a bit like wishful thinking. “The infinite patience of an immortal predator.” Even if she knew exactly where he was, she wasn’t busting in the door to see him. It didn’t feel like her to insult him by invading his home. Some things were sacred… for now.

“She said it’d be unseemly to be seen with you,” Jack pointed out.

“I would be quite the throwback to before her nest went legit. She might not be able to control the narrative if word got out that they were teamed up with me again.” Sam ran his fingers through his hair, steadfastly ignoring the memories of violence, blood, and excess that made up his time with Nima. 

Shae walked in wearing a particularly small, dark purple latex dress that lacked any obvious place to hide a weapon. One of her golden bangles was embedded with her ID and credited with some petty cash. Despite their fashionable appearance, her shoes had steel toes and long, narrow heels made of silver.

“You used to work with her?” she asked Sam, finally prepared to talk about Nima. “She has some serious boundary issues.”

He thought about asking if Shae was alright, but she was moving around getting ready to go out. He didn’t want to risk making things worse by bringing up an awkward subject. The whole thing made him feel uneasy, but that didn’t need to be Shae’s problem.

“Yeah, she does,” he agreed. “I’m sorry I didn’t mention it. It hadn’t occurred to me—“

“I’m fine, Dad.” She briefly touched his forearm in reassurance while walking by him. “I’m going to the club.”

“Be careful,” Sam told her.

Completely apart from the lingering anxiety related to Nima, he couldn’t help but worry about her every time she went out dressed like that. The world was slightly more tolerant than when he was her age, but it still wasn’t as forward-thinking as he would’ve liked. As unimportant as it might be to their family, the fact of the matter was that Shae had a penis and testicles. Sam had grown up hearing enough stories of transwomen getting attacked or killed that he legitimately feared for Shae every time she went out partying—at least when she was outwardly presenting as femme.

“Always,” she offered as a sentiment somewhere between a promise and a reminder.

“Watch for vamps.”

“They aren’t looking to bite me,” she replied while adjusting a setting on her credit bangle, then added with a grin, “I’m too spicy for them.”

He knew better than anyone that vampires didn’t drink demon blood, but there were plenty of other things to worry about. Nima might try to use her to get to him, either with the carrot or the stick. Or the calculating vampire might simply want to get her hooks into Shae for its own value. Then there was the ever-present risk of tribalistic violence from vampires outside of Nima’s nest.

“They’re still dangerous,” he warned.

“I know, Dad.”

She lightly placed her hand on his shoulder and gave him a kiss on the cheek, before heading out the door towards the garage.

Sam idly ran his fingertips along the edge of the table, then picked up his drink and took another sip.

“She’ll be fine,” Dean told him from a nearby display, though it didn’t do much to put him at ease.

He looked up at his brother’s face on the screen. “She takes after you.”

“She takes after Ruby,” Dean countered, not entirely incorrectly. “Why couldn’t you have eaten any nice Christian girls?”

Sam walked over to the display and held his index finger over the power button. “You really want to play the game of poor life choices?”

“Kidding. Kidding.”

He went back to his seat and sank into it. His back riled against his melancholy posture, but he was fairly sure he could dull the pain with a second drink. He was just about to ask Jack to pass him the bottle, then he remembered the hangover he’d had days earlier. Somewhere along the way his lifestyle decisions had all become choosing between the lesser of ailments. He managed to turn a grumble into a sigh as he briefly glanced at the door Shae had left through.

Jack finished his drink, then stretched in his chair. “If you want, I can go keep an eye on her.”

“She’s an adult.”

“So that’s a no?”

“That’s a no,” Sam confirmed. She had a personal life with boundaries that he respected, including not stalking her through clubs. That was her time, apart from the pressures and drama. Between the life of a hunter and her unique status as a demon-human hybrid, she had plenty to escape from. Sadly, life didn’t always allow itself to stay so clearly partitioned. He rubbed his face. “I don’t want her getting involved with Nima.”

Jack nodded in agreement, and Dean said, “I can’t believe it’s been forty-six years and the nest is still swooning over you. They have to know you aren’t the same guy anymore. Scary-blood-addict persona aside, you’re an elderly grouch.”

He couldn’t tell if his brother was trying to add levity or bring up a legitimate point. Maybe if the nest knew he wasn’t in great physical shape they would write him off as more or less dead. Not that he was prepared to risk testing that theory. Knowing his luck, the nest would try to restore his youth by force feeding him the blood of children. The thought made his stomach churn and skin prickle, even though it was absurd. There wasn’t enough magic left for spellwork like that to be practical.

“I’m older,” Sam corrected, trying to redirect the conversation away from his binge-state and any attempts to recapture that terrifying spark. “Elderly sounds like I’m about to break a hip.”

“You’re ninety-five years old.”

“That’s a misnomer. It doesn’t count one-to-one like that.”

Dean replied, “You’re older than me.”

“Yeah, well, you’re dead,” he shot back.

“Which doesn’t make you any younger.”

“God, we’re such a cliche,” Sam muttered while standing up.

“You’re actually very unusual,” corrected Jack.

“Thanks, Jack,” Sam replied sarcastically as he walked out of the room.

He was done with the whole damn day. There was a lot of appeal in retreating to bed and hoping that everyone would wake up in a better mood— or maybe he was the one most in need of a more positive outlook. Well, that was a hard ask, especially considering that he’d probably have another bout of nightmares, inspired by that less wholesome period of his life. Regardless, sleep was necessary and he might as well get it over with.

Before heading to his bedroom, Sam took a quick detour to his office to check his computer. He pulled up the tracker program and looked for Shae. Normally, he didn’t peek at her location while she wasn’t on a job, unless there was an emergency. Everyone might disagree with his assessment that Nima counted as an emergency, but that was because they hardly knew her. When he saw that Shae was at one of her regular clubs, he sighed a breath of relief and made his way to bed.

* * *

The next morning, Sam was sitting at his desk, writing a short report for the lunchtime meeting on the Dire Fang. It was a location none of them had ever been to, in a neighborhood that wasn’t frequented by them. Back when he was younger and still alive, Dean had periodically gone there in search of a nightlife that was closer to that of the late 20th century or early 21st, but that had been decades ago. 

Old Town was run down in a unique, character-defining way. It had never really been built up to begin with, so the decay had its own style. Even the grime on the windows was a slightly different hue. Something about the bedrock had left the five-by-eight block area unable to support buildings over nine stories tall. As a result, the land had become the least valuable per square foot in the city and abandoned by the march of progress. There were constant legal battles over whether the whole thing should be leveled and turned into a private park, but the historical preservationists seemed awfully attached to the relics. Dean had even signed the petition to protect the last one-story diner in the entire city; it hardly mattered that he’d gotten food poisoning roughly half the time he’d eaten there.

Regardless of Old Town’s inherent charm, Sam tried to keep his report concise. He pulled up maps of the streets surrounding the werewolf bar, looked for potential blind spots and routes for losing tails. There were a couple nearby points of interest: a known drug den, a single building that had been sold at a loss twenty times in the last two years, and a used clothing store that received far too many deliveries for that to be all that they sold. Interestingly, the violent crime rate was considerably lower than he was expecting. 

Sam was just noting the death statistics when a soft chime rang out through the office, notifying him that one of his breaking news tracking queries had been triggered. He took a few extra seconds to double-check the kids’ locations. Kesi was in the library, as usual per for a late morning before a scheduled meeting. Shae was a few blocks away, probably picking up groceries or running other errands. Jack had gone to a particular bench on top of a hill that overlooked a private botanical garden— it had been one of Castiel’s favorite places to sit and think. Sam sighed, then sipped his room-temperature sea brew before turning his attention to the news.

A live video feed showed a large hole in the side of a skyscraper. Flames and smoke poured out of the opening as rail-mounted water cannons attempted to douse the hard-to-reach target. The building looked vaguely familiar, but then again, they all blended together over the years. It was hard to tell what was happening at all, until he turned the volume up.

There had been an attack at Precinct 92. A group of seven people in masks and body armor had entered roughly twenty minutes ago. They’d started shooting and used explosives, which had damaged the exterior wall. Debris falling from the explosion had killed eight pedestrians, roughly thirty-five stories below. At least twelve police officers had died of their injuries so far.

Sam stared at the screen in shock. He’d seen plenty of tragedies in his life. With only twenty deaths so far, it was shaping up to not even being in his top ten. But it had been an attack on a police station, an affront to what had seemed a largely untouchable institution. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard of something like that. There had been a fair amount of rioting a generation or two earlier, during the height of the environmental crisis and the failed exodus of the affluent. Some police and paramilitary had been killed on the streets, resulting in the increased security at police stations and governmental facilities. This was the first time he could recall those measures being breached.

… And he’d just been there a couple of days earlier. He couldn’t recall seeing anything out of the ordinary. Most of his attention had been on the third murder victim and making sure that Kesi was alright. There had been the tropospheric incident that had resulted in a few hundred deaths throughout the city. That could’ve caused enough chaos to allow the assault team to do scouting or maybe poke holes in the security.

Aila informed him, “Incoming call from Detective Kohli.”

Sam gawked for a moment at the live feed of the fire. The smokey grey windows just below it on the thirty-fourth floor began swelling with an orange glow before bursting outward, launching glass shards to rain down on the bystanders and emergency service workers below. The barrier between floors had given way, dumping flaming debris into a new environment to ravage. The flames dimmed briefly as the automatic halon system tried to quell the fire by removing the oxygen feeding it, but the flames immediately flared as air rushed in the gaping hole in the wall. They’d have to get actual fire trucks—

“Incoming call—” Aila’s voice shook him out of his mortified thrall, letting him pick up the call. 

“Don’t talk,” Juneeta told him as soon as he answered. “Meet me where we first met. Bring a sweep.” She hung up.

She wanted him to check her for surveillance devices. That at least told him what had been targeted: either her or the evidence for the case. He pulled up the video feeds covering all entrances to the base as well as the door to the anechoic chamber. Everything was quiet, for the moment, but that wasn’t likely to last.


	8. Juneeta

Sam took a few deep, deliberate breaths as he drove to meet Juneeta. Normally, he tried to stick to the lower level of the multi-tiered concrete byway system. That lowly place almost never saw daylight, making it dangerous for any number of reasons, but it had its perks. It allowed him to avoid the watchful eyes of the powerful who deemed themselves literally above such an unseemly place. Unfortunately, it was teeming with a bit more activity than usual.

The attack on the police station had been a spark that had ignited decades of dissent. Literal fires were burning. He passed the smoldering remains of three parked cars. Groups of a few dozen rioters were looting the more reputable retail complexes that he passed. A handful of kids threw chunks of concrete at security cameras and low-flying drones. Teenagers began tagging every surface that they dared.

It was like the old riots all over again. Before too long, the mobs would start feeling emboldened by the lack of police involvement and creep into the nicer neighborhoods. They’d eventually meet resistance, then would come the torturous dance: the police would beat them back, but in the process civilians would die, inspiring them to return better-organized and more passionate than before, and the police would rise to meet them.

He wasn’t sure how the cycle of violence was supposed to end this time. Last time had involved a fairly simple resolution: the offending elites had been eaten by a giant space beast. If only they were to be so lucky again. He was certainly sympathetic to the fears and frustrations of those currently marching in the streets, but he didn’t know what he could do—aside from getting his friend out of that mess. 

Sam took the second tier of the byway for as long as he could, then exited down to where he’d nearly been arrested by Juneeta over a decade ago for trespassing at a crime scene. There weren’t any protestors or rioters around and nearly everyone else was probably inside watching the news, but he was still constantly watching for threats. Kesi and Shae were lurking nearby. He had asked them to come as cover, in case of an attack, but also for their heightened senses.

“I don’t feel anything out of the ordinary,” Kesi said over the comm as he parked a bit down the street from where Juneeta was waiting.

“Nothing hiding in the shadows either,” added Shae.

“Alright. I’m going,” Sam told them as he got out of the car to approach Juneeta.

She was standing beside one of the skeletal metal pillars that supported the grate walkway above them. Most of the identifiable elements of her police uniform had wisely been left at the precinct, though her straight-cut dark blue pants and sharp boots were a give-away if one was looking closely. Instead of her usual professionally styled top, she had thrown on a breezy, patterned purple blouse. She clutched her heavy wool coat to her as best she could without exposing her prosthetic arm. 

When she saw him, she quickly took a step forward, then stopped herself from hurrying recklessly toward a friendly face. She glanced around to see who might be watching before continuing on to meet him.

They didn’t speak, not while there was a risk that she might have a bug on her. Sam wordlessly held out an electromagnetic-shielded evidence bag. She nodded, then dropped her watch into it. With a little effort, she took out her contacts, and the comm piercing attached to her right tragus. Once the bag was sealed, he pulled a small handheld signal sweeper from his jacket pocket and ran it over her. As he worked, she took off her coat and belt to accommodate him. Her clothes and shoes seemed bugfree, but she didn’t bother putting her belt back on. Instead, she rolled it up and stuck it in her pocket, before hastily slipping her coat back on.

“My car,” he told her, gesturing for her to follow him.

As they walked the quarter of a block to his mustang, he strained his ears for the sound of an extra set of footsteps or the rustling of an overcoat in an alley ahead. His eyes briefly glanced up to confirm that he could see Shae and Kesi, watching him. Kesi lingered on an upper walkway, pretending to wait for admittance to a residential building. Shae was barely visible in the shadows of a twelve-story parking structure on the other side of the street.

To his relief, they reached the car without incident. In the distance, he could hear glass shattering, but they were on the road before anyone spotted them.

“You want us to shadow you?” Shae asked over the comm.

“Just watch for tails for a mile or so, then go see what you can get at the station,” he instructed.

After waiting a beat to see if the conversation was apparently over, Jeneeta asked, “Your partner?”

“Yeah.” He wasn’t prepared to clue her in to how many people he worked with or who they were.

“Can’t be too careful,” she replied, though he couldn’t tell if she was excusing his secrecy or the precaution of having them be shadowed briefly.

Until the picture of what was happening became clear, both of them had to be cautious. As much as he might like her on a personal level, she was working for an organization with questionable ties that had just been targeted in a deadly attack. Meanwhile, he was a somewhat mysterious figure, who operated outside of the law, dealing with things she could hardly imagine.

To break some of the tense silence, he said, “Thank you for calling.”

“Thank you for answering.”

Several seconds later, he decided to ask the question that hung between them. “They were after the implant, weren’t they?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her nod to herself. “I think so, yeah.” She shifted, adjusting her coat a bit. “They broke in, then blew up that set of evidence lockers. After that they wiped our archive of digital images going back four days. I know there were other things in the lockers, but that short time window on the data wipe— It’s too much to be a coincidence.”

Over the comm, Shae told him, “You look clean. We’re heading to the CS.”

Sam saw Shae’s motorcycle break off, taking an upramp roughly three hundred feet behind him. 

“Sounds good. Message me if you need me,” he replied, then told Juneeta, “No sign of a tail.”

She let out a long sigh before saying, “I was there. My last shift this week.”

Her office was only a couple floors above where the explosion had been. He wasn’t sure if she’d gone down to assist in the fight or merely been caught up in it while trying to evacuate. Either way, she’d apparently had a close call.

“Are you okay?”

She leaned back against the headrest as she stared out the window. “Okay enough. It’s just been a while since I’ve seen combat.” After a long pause, she continued. “I’ve never seen an attack like that. They were wearing body armor, but even with it, you’d think one of them would’ve gone down. There was so much shooting.”

“If they weren’t human, normal bullets might’ve only been a nuisance. Lots of things take silver.” He glanced at her holstered pistol, quickly assessing the caliber. “I have some rounds in the trunk that you can take. It’s not much, and you’ll need to anticipate when to switch from normal to silver, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Thank you,” she replied, then went back to quietly watching the passing scenery.

He regretted having not turned on music when he started the car. The silence was awkward, but abruptly fiddling with the music library would only underscore the discomfort.

Mercifully, she asked, “Where do you get silver bullets?”

“I make mine. A while back, one of the….” He tried to think of the right term for such a niche profession. “Crafters for the community had a purity issue. A few hundred bullets got distributed with less than 70% silver; they were cut with nickel. About a dozen hunters died. I’ve been making what I can since.”

“Is there anything you don’t do?” Her voice seemed almost normal again, having shaken some of the shock.

“Go on vacation,” he answered.

“What’s a vacation?”

Sam appreciated the joke, but could only manage a half-smile. He supposed people like them weren’t the sort to ever catch a break. They were both doing their best to fight against the evils of the world manifested, and unlike the majority of the police force or the world at large, they both knew that there were incomprehensible things lurking in the shadows. She may have only caught glimpses in the form of ghastly corpses or the explanations he’d given, but that was certainly enough to change a person. In a lot of ways, she reminded him of Jody before she had taken on the mantle of a hunter. 

He glanced over at Juneeta. Strands of her hair had become loose, pulled from her long braid probably as she’d ducked or lunged in the firefight. There was a bit of blood drying in the seams of her cybernetic arm. Her flesh and blood fingers rapped on her knee, absentmindedly working to consume the adrenaline left in her system— but she wasn’t trembling with the fear of a novice. It wasn’t her first firefight; he certainly hoped it was her last.

Sam pulled into the parking garage for a complex containing the Bright End Motel. The pay-by-hour establishment was wedged between two brothels, a fortune teller’s hallucinogens shop, and a ground-floor commercial space that perpetually had a ‘for lease’ sign in its broken windows. The streets and lower sections of the exterior walls were covered in patches of algae and slime.

“This isn’t exactly the place for a cop,” Juneeta commented with a little tilt of the head as she eyed the flickering sign for one of the brothels.

“For $5,000, they’ll erase all records that you were here. If you’re worried about being found, this is the last place anyone will look for you,” he told her. “Hide your arm, and let me do the talking.”

In a slightly playful voice she asked, “Do you take many women here?”

“Only the ones whose lives might be in danger,” he replied, then got out of the car.

Juneeta followed him as she tucked her hands into her jacket pockets, concealing the fact that she had a metal arm. Prosthetic limbs weren’t unheard of, but it certainly would make her easier to identify.

He guided her into the motel’s small lobby. The whole place was covered in some sort of mint green polymer tile. He’d never asked the question of why every surface of the room needed to be able to be hosed down, nor why it always smelled vaguely of mildew. The motel was run by a family of reputable small-time criminals, who didn’t charge exorbitant prices for quality service. And they actually washed the sheets.

“One single for six hours, plus hour-to-hour,” Sam told the man behind the front desk.

The partially balding innkeeper yawned as he got up from his chair. He pushed his glasses up his nose, which had clearly been broken long ago and never healed right, then replied, “$600 for the first six hours. $150 for each hour over.”

“$5,000 for the time and a clean slate,” Sam countered as he pulled an untraceable, preloaded card from his pocket and placed it onto the desk. “And I want a log of everyone who checks in or stops in to ask a question for the next two days.”

The man thought for a moment before asking, “And if they pay for my silence?”

“Well, I paid you first.”

“What if they pay me more?”

Sam lightly chewed the inside of his cheek. “Then give me that needle-threading ‘I can’t disclose private contracts’ bullshit.” At least then he’d know that someone had traced them to that shitty motel, and had had enough pocket change to outbid him for the man’s loyalty. He lifted his fingers from the card, giving the money to the man before pointing a finger at him. “And remember that I can deal in favors and misfortune just as much as money.”

The motel worker idly scratched his neck. “Deal.” 

Sam took the key card for the room, then guided Juneeta down the narrow hallway. Various unsavory sounds drifted through the thin walls. The fluorescent lighting in the long, windowless corridor slowly swelled and dimmed. It was a sickly sort of place.

Walking down the hallway, he told Juneeta, “If you could overlook the whole me threatening that guy—“

“Occupationally speaking, I’m overlooking the last hour and counting.”

The room was hardly more than a full-sized bed with a few shelves above it. With both of them standing inside and the door closed, there wasn’t enough space for him to extend his arms without hitting her or the wall… unless he was on the bed. He shifted slightly and turned his attention away from the bed. At least the walls were white instead of the disgusting green, and there was a small window.

“I can check your equipment for hidden tracking codes back at my place, but it’ll take a couple of hours,” he explained while pulling a burner phone from his pocket and handing it to her. “This has my number in it, if something happens while I’m gone. If there’s code and it looks like they’re targeting you, I’ll come back and take you somewhere—“

In the light of the garish advertisement display outside the window, he could see that there was some blood on her forehead, above her right temple. Sam stepped closer and gently brushed some of her loose hair aside, to check for an injury that thankfully wasn’t there. Her eyes avoided him in an act of embarrassment. At first he didn’t understand what was wrong, until she used her hand to cover the slight crow’s feet by her eyes. It was the closest they’d ever been to each other, and he was examining her streak of silver hair.

He carefully cupped her cheek in his hand, then turned her face up to meet his eyes. She was beautiful, but he knew well the doubt that came with seeing your reflection change. Neither of them were the images of their youth; the passage of time was there to be seen. They’d both been through much, even to the point of losing pieces along the way— And she was so fucking beautiful, without qualification.

Without breaking their gaze, he reached down with his free hand and took her prosthetic hand in his. The metal was cool to the touch, but it was hardly lifeless. Her fingers gingerly interlaced with his.

Juneeta swallowed hard and for a moment he thought she might speak, but it seemed she was equally at a loss for words. Her hand touched his chest, resting for a moment, before sliding up to wrap around the back of his neck and pulling him into a kiss.

It’d been so long since he’d kissed anyone that he felt flustered. Their lips met cautiously at first, lingering for a second to see if the other might pull away and say that there’d been some mistake. But no embarrassing moment of regret came.

He caressed her cheek while kissing her more deeply. She inched forward, eager for more. As she moved closer, they embraced and his hand slowly slid down to rest on the small of her back. They were close before in that cramped room, but as he pulled her to him, suddenly all he could think about was the two of them; everything around them faded to the background.

Before he knew it, they’d shed their coats, dropped haphazardly on the floor, and were on the bed. Her leg wrapped around his thigh as she rubbed against him. He gently rocked his hips, moving with her. All the grinding was starting to make him hard, and based on the ravenous kissing, she was just as eager.

Her hands fumbled with unbuttoning his shirt, so he started to help her. He’d barely gotten the first one undone before he pulled back from her slightly, breaking the kiss, then warned, “I have some tattoos.”

“Who doesn’t?” Juneeta replied, breathing heavily. Her cheeks were a bit flush.

She undid his shirt and opened it up. Her eyes widened as her mouth went slack. She propped herself up on one elbow, then gawked at the extensive tattooing for a moment before slowly slipping his shirt off of him. Seeing that his shoulders and back were similarly covered, a little smile spread across her lips. She actually started chuckling.

“ _ Some _ tattoos,” she repeated, clearly amused.

“When I was younger… let’s just say mistakes were made.”

With a playful grin on her lips, she replied, “Who didn’t?”

When she pulled her blouse off over her head, her eyes briefly flicked to the point just above her left elbow where her prosthetic met the flesh. He thoughtfully stroked down her shoulder, past her skin, along the metal arm, then lifted her cybernetic hand to his lips, kissing the pressure sensors. Her chest heaved subtly at the act or the sensation, before she pounced on top of him.

Sam undid her bra, tossing it aside. He cupped her ass, pulling her up his body as his lips traveled down her chest. Teasing her nipples with his tongue and fingertips earned a soft moan. He loved the way she writhed against him.

His hand gradually slid further down her body and began to undo her pants. She quickly stripped them off, along with her panties, then shifted to help him with his. He removed his own pants, but when she tugged at his boxers, he told her, “I need a minute.”

She nodded, mouth open, cheeks flush, panting, completely bare as she straddled him. Her messy braid of silver and black draped beside her right breast, down to her waist. He took a moment to appreciate her naked body in the multichromatic light streaming in the window, painting her in shades of pink, purple, and red. He reached up, caressing her cheek as he drew her down into a kiss.

His fingertips lightly slid down her torso, stopping just shy of slipping between her legs. Without breaking their kiss, she gently bit his lower lip and nodded. He began playing with her, slow and steady, watching for her subtle cues to guide him. Her lips brushed against his cheek and jaw as she panted, trembling at his touch.

“Oh, god,” she exhaled, caught between a whisper and a moan.

As soon as he made a move to take off his boxers, she was helping him push them down. He eagerly pressed into her, earning a small gasp, so he stopped halfway in. She was perfectly slick, but tight enough that he helplessly let out a grunt. He’d be sore later.

Juneeta chewed her lower lip. “It’s been a while.”

He nodded in understanding, then leaned in and kissed. Her moan was muffled by their kissing, as he pushed into her, more gently than before. He started out slow, cautious of his own limits, but in the moment he barely felt any of the usual aches. When they found their rhythm, she reached up and gripped the wall above the bed so tightly with her cybernetic arm that she snapped off a piece of the lowest shelf. An amused grin spread across his face and they both exhaled a chuckle before he started fucking her harder.

Sam felt her tighten and pulse around him. He couldn’t have lasted any longer to save his life. Pressing into her as hard as he could, he lost himself, coming with her. When they’d both finished, he collapsed next to her on the tiny bed.

They lay there, panting and tacky with sweat. His dick was aching, and based on the way her legs were splayed, she was feeling it too. He spotted a horizontal scar across her lower abdomen, then glanced at her hands to confirm that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

“He passed away ten years ago,” she said, answering the unvoiced question. “I have two sons, first grandkid is due in a couple months.”

Sam nodded, a bit thrown by learning about her personal life. He considered her a friend, but they’d never discussed that sort of thing. Thinking about it, he wasn’t sure he’d had a sincere conversation about anyone’s family in several decades. The intimacy of it made him shift a bit, but there wasn’t anywhere to go; Juneeta was practically snuggling up against him. They’d just had sex. A little candidness was reasonable.

“I have a daughter,” he told her. He briefly debated explaining that his kid was genderqueer, but honestly he didn’t really like the idea of saying anything that would make Shae more identifiable. “Her mom died when she was a baby—and I helped raise my niece.”

“They ever make you feel old?”

“Not as much as actually being old makes me feel old.”

She dragged her fingers up his chest. “For what it’s worth, you fuck like a thirty-five-year-old.”

The compliment would’ve made him blush if he hadn’t already been flush from the exercise.

“I might need a little more recovery time than a thirty-five-year-old,” Sam said as he experimentally tried stroking his dick. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d tested his minimum duration between goes. Regardless, they didn’t have the luxury of infinite time. After taking a few minutes to let his pulse come down, he’d have to leave. “And that recovery time might have to include me abandoning you for several hours.”

“It’ll probably take that long before my legs are working.” She rested her chin on his chest and studied his face. Her fingertips traced the scars on his cheek.

“It was a wraith,” he explained, then added, “An extra aggressive, extra tough ghost.”

“I didn’t want to ask,” Juneeta told him, though he noticed that it wasn’t a denial of her curiosity. She took one of his hands and held it up in front of his face. “What about these?”

At least a hundred small scars covered his skin. In many ways he didn’t care about fitting into conventionally attractive standards. It’d been a generation or more since he’d flirted with anyone other than Juneeta, and that had always seemed like just a polite dance. But the tattered, scored appearance of his hands was a slight sore spot. As much as the scars on his face had come from a painful story, the ones on his hands had a darker origin.

“From books and kitchen knives,” he replied before elaborating. “I was sick for a long time. My immune system was pretty shot and my blood didn’t clot well, so even the little stuff made a big impact.” He sucked his teeth, a bit embarrassed by the memories trickling through his mind. “I’d get tremors and was weak, so I was… let’s say, clumsy.”

“Are you okay now?” she asked.

He considered the various scopes that such a question might entail. “It’s nothing contagious,” he assured her. They’d just had unprotected sex after all. “I have to take medication everyday, but so far I’ve mostly been okay.” With that reminder, he glanced at his watch. He was only two hours shy of having Aila pestering him incessantly about taking his serum. In an apologetic voice he added, “Speaking of, I’ve got to get back.”

Her flesh-and-blood hand lightly patted his chest. “You aren’t breaking my schoolgirl heart. Go do what you need to—“ She pointed at his face. “—and check my equipment. I don’t want to be in this place alone any longer than I have to.”

“Yes, officer,” he replied while pushing himself up from the bed to start searching for his underwear.

* * *

When he got home, he took Juneeta’s equipment to the anechoic chamber and got the tracking sweep running. With the computer chunking away, he went to go take a shower. After stripping in the bathroom, he studied his reflection in the mirror.

His muscles weren’t what they used to be, though maybe Juneeta had been too distracted by his tattoos to notice that he wasn’t in peak physical condition. He tried to push the negative thoughts from his mind, but it was somewhat undercut by him running his fingers through his hair to check how much brown was left. He felt ridiculous for superficially picking himself apart like that. She saw something in him, whether it was physical or their friendship— He had no idea how to have that kind of relationship anymore.

As he stared at himself in the mirror, his watch tapped his wrist and displayed the text, “Private message.”

“Yes, Aila?”

“Based on biometric and positioning data, it is probable that you had sexual relations with a partner within the last two hours.” He rolled his eyes at the AI having, by some standards, observed them fucking. “Would you like to hear the Center for Disease Control’s guideline—“

“Please stop.”

Sam stepped into the shower and let the water run over him for a while, hoping that it would do something to soothe his various aches and the tension in his shoulders. Things were getting too complicated. Maybe his life had fallen into a bleak routine of work and casual despair, but at least that was predictable and familiar. Suddenly, in the course of a few hours, his case had literally blown up and he’d had sex. There was admittedly a high to go along with the lows. He just wasn’t sure how to feel about so much happening all at once…. God, the sex had been nice.

He finished washing himself off, then got dressed in a fresh set of clothes before going to check on the progress with Juneeta’s equipment. Everything was clean of tracking code. She wasn’t the target, which meant that the attackers had been following the implant itself instead of the officer that was assigned to the investigation. That was a relief. She would be safer, and it meant that his existence was less likely to be discovered.

He went back to the motel to return her stuff and rescue her from that shady place. Of course, he arrived five minutes after the hour, and the management rounded up. With the room already paid for through the next fifty-five minutes, they decided to get the most out of it. He limped on his way back to the car, unsure which was more sore: his knees, his back, or his dick— but he wasn’t complaining.

He drove her to one of the metro stations that was safely away from the ongoing riots.

Before reaching for the car door to exit, she said, “If you want to come over sometime, I can make a very classy cocktail.” She leaned in close and lowered her voice. “I’ve even got a little bottle of real gin, for the right company.”

He smiled at the thought of what might technically qualify as a date… though he just wasn’t ready for something like that. “That sounds really nice. After this case, when things aren’t so….” He didn’t know where to begin in articulating his fears for his family and the city as a whole.

“I get it,” she assured him, though he could hear a bit of disappointment in her voice. “We both have responsibilities.” With a light kiss, she added, “Hurry up and solve this case, so I can make you that cocktail,” then got out of the car.


	9. The Wolves of Old Town

Sam leaned against the spikey, black foam walls of the anechoic chamber and turned the implant over in his hand, examining its delicate form, nested in the chip reader. It seemed very likely that someone was willing to kill for that little piece of tech. More than a few routine murders, there had been an assault on a fortified police station by armored, possibly nonhuman assailants.

He considered the security at their base. Probably the best thing going for them was their moderate anonymity. Every member of the family had at least six aliases, and utilized fake and remote addresses for different purposes. Practically speaking, they’d have to be physically followed back to their base to be found out. Accessing their base involved bypassing advanced and custom modified tech, as well as several spells, though the magic had worn incredibly thin and couldn’t be relied upon.

They were somewhat safe where they were, or at least he couldn’t think of a safer location… well, not one that he’d want to go to. Nima’s building undoubtedly had a sophisticated paramilitary security system, plus the largest nest of vampires in the city defending it. She had always been incredibly protective of her people; it was one of her more admirable traits. But aside from that nightmare scenario, he couldn’t think of a better place to be than the Men of Letters base.

Issues of immediate safety being as good as it was going to get, the question turned back to why that piece of tech was worth killing over. He glanced over at Kesi, who was sitting at the desk. She’d been reviewing the limited data that the cracking software had unlocked for the last four hours, trying to decipher what the thing was programmed to do.

“It keeps pushing back against the crack,” she complained, then leaned back in her chair and stretched. “We’re making progress, but it’s dropped down to a crawl.”

“I’m guessing that’s where all the good stuff is,” he speculated.

“At least some of it.” Kesi grabbed one of the tablets that was so arcane that it was incapable of establishing a wireless connection, and plugged it into the computer. “I’ll copy over dumb files of my synthesized finding so far. I think we’ve got enough for a briefing. And I need to get out of this coffin.”

Sam tilted his head in acknowledgement of the claustrophobic feeling the small, black room could inspire. He placed the chip reader back down on the desk and gave her a pat on the shoulder as he walked behind her towards the door. “I’ll go roundup Shae and Jack.”

When they were all gathered, Kesi began her explanation. “From what I’ve seen so far, it’s a networked implant that causes euphoria by triggering the release of different hormones.” She paused for a split second, probably debating how much detail to get into on the issue of the exact hormones and how they functioned, but evidently decided not to get off on a tangent. “These sorts of implants usually have a preset interval for it to ping out for instructions. As long as you pay the subscription, you get your fix.”

It wasn’t an unheard of form of recreational drug. Why bother with the effort of brewing and distributing batches of consumable narcotic when you could install hardware to manufacture the high straight into a person’s body.

“Pleasure chips don’t kill people,” Shae pointed out. “Anyway, Nima said that this chip was advanced and custom manufactured. This isn’t just some alley-dank dealer.

“Detective Kohli said that the attack on the station targeted the evidence locker where the implant was supposed to be and their records were wiped,” Sam informed them. “Someone with access to a hit squad, and who doesn’t have a problem killing cops is after these chips, and is destroying the evidence.”

“Definitely not alley-dank,” Shae repeated. “So is this chip special or what? Advanced design or not, corporate espionage usually has a lower body count.”

Last time he checked, the death toll had been thirty-two people, including fifteen civilians. Upper Crust crimes rarely made the news, but rumors spread easily enough. Shae was right; corporate espionage usually took the form of threats or much cleaner assassinations. Blowing up two floors of a police station was a far cry from extorting an entire board of directors with their sordid dealings, poisoning champagne, or even a single well-placed bullet followed by a visit to an industrial composter.

“I don’t know if or why this chip might be special,” Kesi replied. “I didn’t get all the way through the analysis. It kinda started fighting our software, so I haven’t finished digging through the code, but I didn’t see an obvious governor on it.” She gestured vaguely at the tablet displaying the code. “If there’s nothing regulating the hormone bursts, that could be a problem, but nobody’d be dumb enough to design a pleasure implant with no limits.”

“Maybe the governor’s in the portion of code that hasn’t been cracked,” Sam suggested.

“I’m sorry.” Shae raised her hand to interrupt them before they got too far. “Did you say that a pleasure chip that’s cut off from the net, cloud, and vapor—that chip just started fighting our cracking software harder than before? That’s weird, right?”

Sam and Kesi exchanged a glance, mutually surprised that they’d both overlooked the oddity of such a sophisticated defensive reaction from the tech itself.

“Yeah. It’s weird,” Kesi agreed. “It could be prewritten priorities on what to defend, adaptive programming, or maybe virtual intelligence. Artificial intelligence for such a small piece of hardware, to be innate, working offline—that’d either be insanely advanced or so full of shortcuts that it’d be terrifying.” 

“I’m gonna say it,” Jack interjected. “We weren’t sure about this case before, but this is an illegal pleasure implant, not werewolves using stims to make themselves more powerful. Now, with this sort of pressure to cover it up we should….” His voice trailed off, unable to think of the right next step towards disengaging from the whole mess.

The chip was already quarantined. Destroying it wouldn’t get them anything. Returning it to Juneeta would only create one more opportunity for its creator to discover that they knew about it. It certainly felt like wishful thinking to imagine that their family might be allowed to live when even less-informed bystanders had been killed.

“One of the victims was a werewolf,” Shae replied. “That’s pretty firmly in our territory. We’ve got a lead that has us coming at this from a direction that isn’t charging headfirst into the implant,” she reminded them. “Ignore the wolf, and we’re just sitting here waiting for that assault team to come through our door, whether it happens in days or months. If we don’t figure out who’s behind this, we’ll always be waiting for the other drop.”

“The best defense is a good offense,” Jack acknowledged.

Sam scowled slightly at the merits of the argument. She wasn’t wrong. Unfortunately, that didn’t make him any happier about them prodding about so close to an incredibly dangerous and unknown enemy.

“Good reconnaissance and research makes a good offense,” he reminded them. “The pre-mission report for the Dire Fang that I was working on is almost done. Review time will probably take an hour. We could be field ready in two hours.”

“Dad.” Shae hesitated a moment before saying, “You don’t look like you’d fit in there. The crowd is a bit... younger.”

The natural lifespan of a werewolf was roughly fifty years. He was nearly double that. It was true that purebreds could reach sixty with special lifestyle changes and a little luck, but it would be highly unusual for someone looking like him to walk into a werewolf establishment.

He debated suggesting that every one of them would inevitably be recognized as an outsider, but decided not to push the issue. As much as he wanted to chaperone such an unorthodox outing, he wasn’t the right person for this particular mission anymore. Not only was he the least physically capable among them, he’d stick out the most in what was a gathering place for a private people. The kids would have a better chance of fitting in.

“Okay,” he conceded. “I can cover the home front, but I’ll be watching and on comms.”

“That wasn’t even a question,” Shae muttered.

“I want to go,” Kesi said, then added, “I can’t work on the implant until the software cracks the security, and I need to get out of that cave for a while.”

Sam absentmindedly tapped his fingers on the table. At least Shae wouldn’t attempt going in alone. She sometimes pushed back against Jack injecting himself into missions, possibly because he had more years on her, or maybe because his moral flexibility left him a bit unpredictable. But Kesi was always an acceptable accomplice to Shae.

“I’ll finish the brief,” he told them as he stood up. “Go load up on silver and—“

“Wolfsbane,” Shae said, finishing the reminder with affectionate annoyance. “We know, Dad. Don’t worry.”

* * *

Old Town was mostly unchanged from the time when Dean had frequented it. It was a lawless land that smelled of decay. Half a century earlier that aroma would’ve been cheap beer and urine in the gutters. Now that beer was a commodity too valuable to spill, the pungent odor was the vomit of those who wouldn’t dare waste a drop of synthehol or food, no matter how old it might be or how much they’d already had. Neither Shae nor Kesi commented on the smell, but watching the video feeds from his desk, Sam could see them attempt to subtly cover their noses as they walked.

Multiple drainage grates in the street were clogged, creating large puddles of grey water that encroached on the sidewalk. The algae spread out from the pools and threatened to engulf many of the buildings given a couple years without human intervention. An elderly woman wearing cracked yellow rubber waders, a smock, and a large filter mask, used some sort of narrow-spectrum flashlight on the invasive slime, causing it to shrivel into an ashen substance. At the sight, Kesi took out her pocket respiratory filter and stuck it in her nostrils.

Nearly every window on the lowest two floors were protected with old fashioned metal bars, though some opted for additional features, such as spikes. One handmade sign stated “FUCKING TRY US,” and an equally standoffish message in Korean appeared to be new enough that it had probably been put up during the recent riots. There were a few broken windows and scorch marks around doorways, but there was less damage than expected. Evidently, the residents of Old Town knew that their real enemies lay elsewhere.

The Dire Fang barely had a sign. Imperfectly aligned words had been hand laser cut into the exterior wall. Had it not been for the need for the occasional customer, the werewolf bar probably would’ve stayed an unmarked, private club. Shae got the door, holding it open for her younger cousin.

The interior was slightly more hospitable than the outside. A small bar setup on the left wall was being idly tended to by a woman. There were three stained pool tables, half a dozen tables and worn booths, but the real focal point was in the back of the dimly lit hall. There was a fifteen foot by fifteen foot floor-to-ceiling metal cage. The floor inside the cage was lined with blotchy brown carpet, unlike the linoleum surface of the rest of the establishment. Kesi stared at the pen before sparing an uncertain glance up at Shae.

“Never a dull moment, cruising the city,” Shae commented under her breath.

A handful of patrons lingered about with an ease that probably meant they were regulars— werewolves. They eyed the newcomers.

“Not exactly the way I’d like to mingle. I think I’ll keep to pool,” Kesi replied as she grabbed a stick, then went to wrack the balls on one of the tables. 

A large man got up from one of the tables and approached her. “Dainty little bite like you wants to play?”

“Being dainty or little doesn’t count against me on the felt.” Kesi grabbed a larger questick and held it out to him.

He stared at her for a moment as a wicked grin spread across his face, then he accepted the stick.

Sam whispered in her ear through the comm, “Try not to embarrass him so badly that he wants to kill you.”

Shae high-five-low-fived her cousin while making her way to the bar. She perched on one of the metal stools, then waved down the bartender.

The bartender was a woman with light brown hair in her twenties, but the fatigue in her cold blue eyes seemed to add at least a decade. A scar dipped down from her lower lip towards her chin. Her right earlobe was torn, but that hadn’t stopped her from adorning it with three copper studs. She moved with a sort of reservation that was too wary for someone in the customer service industry.

“The bartender is also a wolf,” Sam warned over the comm.

Shae rested her elbows on the bar top and leaned forward. “I was just thinking that,” she said, waiting just a beat to make sure her dad knew she was responding to him before adding, “a beer would be great.”

The woman studied her for a moment, then asked, “We got six mixers: a pils, stout, wheat, two lagers, and two ales that taste like lead. If you want the brewed stuff it’ll cost you more, and we only got the one kind.”

“What kind?”

The bartender laughed at something, then explained, “The priss who order real beers never ask.” She immediately turned around and started concocting a low-ABV beverage, then placed a large black cartridge into the drink dispenser. “The priss order it to impress.” When the incredibly dark synthetic beer was done, the bartender placed it on the counter in front of Shae.

“I can’t just have a preference for bitter beer?”

“For your sake I hope not.” She nodded at the drink. “That’s a stout.”

Shae sat there for a moment, probably debating how to reaction to such an indignity. After glancing at Kesi to make sure the pool game was going well, she picked up the beer and took a sip. It was obvious to everyone that they were outsiders. The only question was whether that status would prevent them from getting intel.

“What’s the cage for?” Shae asked, making a reasonable attempt at small talk.

“Alpha of the Moon.” The bartender gestured at the floor-to-ceiling cage. After a moment she elaborated. “It’s a competition we run. The first round, all contenders enter and fight until only one is standing.”

Shae furrowed her brow. “To the death?”

The woman laughed sharply. “And losing all our top fighters? Fuck no. Nonlethal. Just bare-knuckles. Tap out or knock out.”

“And the second round?”

The bartender smiled at a thought. She picked up a glass and started cleaning it before replying, “The one standing at the end of round one still needs to have the stamina to fuck anyone presenting.”

Shae looked back at the cage. It certainly didn’t appear to offer any privacy. “In front of everyone?”

“Yeah.”

On the comm, Dean said, “Wolves, always keeping it classy.”

“Stop with the peanut gallery,” Sam told him. “You’ll make them laugh.”

“That sounds like it would draw quite the crowd,” Shae observed aloud. “Does it get busy?”

The bartender continued to clean glasses as she said, “Maybe.”

“And if I was looking for someone—“

“Nope.” She looked up at Shae and told her, “Gonna be nope; don’t need the rest of that toeing-around-it shit. Nobody has seen anybody, and whoever you’re looking for won’t be there—“

“Gregory Blair won’t be there?” Shae asked as a pointed name drop.

The bartender’s jaw clenched subtly. Whatever minimal humor had been on her face was gone. Clearly she knew who he was, but it wasn’t obvious whether she was offended by him or the overstep of a stranger mentioning a person of authority within the community.

“I don’t know you or what you want.”

“Just to speak with him.” When the woman didn’t react, Shae added, “It’s about a werewolf.”

The ambient sounds of Kesi playing pool and the others talking seemed to drop off completely. Explicitly calling out the species while clearly not being one of them had evidently been a faux pas. It was dangerous to be a nonhuman in the city, and some groups were more sensitive than others about candidly discussing such things, especially with people they didn’t know.

The woman behind the counter shifted slowly, cracking a few joints. She leaned forward and quietly said, “Finish your drink, then take your friend and get out of my bar. I sell drink to outsiders, but I don’t owe shit to a random tame who’s talking awfully loud about things she doesn’t know fuck-all about.”

Over the comm, Sam told them, “Wrap it up and leave. No point getting her more angry.”

* * *

When Shae and Kesi got back to the base, Sam was waiting for them. The mission had been a bust and there wasn’t much to be done about it right then. At some point they’d have to go over the encounter and discuss what could’ve been done better. It was always difficult interacting with an unknown quantity. When it came to werewolves, Sam and Dean had only really been sociable with Garth, who’d been a friend before being turned— hardly an archetype for the species as a whole. But the kids had gone in fairly cold and pushed too hard too fast for access to a guarded member of a guarded people.

“I messed up,” Shae told him as she climbed out of the car. “You don’t have to say anything.”

Her voice wasn’t as light as usual when she was femme and she was more withdrawn. She didn’t meet his eyes as she walked towards him… or towards the door in an attempt at a quick retreat. It was normal for Shae to give herself a hard time over mistakes. She tried like hell; there was just a lot to live up to in a family like theirs.

“It’s okay. It was a tough interaction. I’m not mad,” he assured her. “We can give them some time, then Jack and I can try it.”

She shook her head subtly, more at her own thoughts than his statement. “I want to fix things.”

His stomach churned with a pang of guilt as he said, “Shae… another time, sure. But you were in a wolf den. Next time there might be more around. None of us want a fight with them.” He sighed, unsure whether to even bring up the other concern on his mind. “This is our last good lead on this case—“

“Fine. I get it,” she replied with a slightly sharp edge while walking out of the room.

The two of them had a way of butting heads more than anyone else. At times things between them reminded him of his relationship with his dad. It was that damn Winchester stubbornness. He was just trying to keep her safe; that was his job.

Sam went to Shae’s bedroom and found the door shut. He gently knocked on it once, then said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to go like that. I just….” He didn’t have the energy to restate that he was worried about her for the millionth time.

“Don’t stress about it, Dad,” she replied through the door.

He waited for a few seconds to see if she’d come out or say anything else, but there was just silence.

After a little while, he wandered off to the library. It’d been too long since he’d read an actual book and he needed something to take his mind off everything. He slowly walked around, studying the many spines. More than half of the large collection had already been read by him over the course of his lengthy residence there. The years when he had been homebound had involved a significant amount of reading, though not all of it was magical annals.

Sam stopped in front of the bookcase full of children’s books. He was caught up in the memory of a four-year-old Shae, sitting on his lap while he was in his wheelchair. They were reading a beautifully illustrated book of fairy tales when he’d accidentally gotten a paper cut. He had taken a small antiseptic bandage from his pocket and placed it on what would inevitably become another scar. When he was done, Shae leaned over and kissed the bandage— to make it better.

He pulled the book of fairy tales from the shelf. Its cover and spine were worn around the edges. It had been a favorite of the kids, Kesi more than Shae. He carried it over to one of the more comfortable, antique leather chairs tucked away in the corner, then started reading it. Some of the stories came back to him so strongly and quickly that by the second sentence he could’ve recited the whole thing from memory. Others were less familiar, mostly the few that the kids hadn’t cared for, but there was another tale in the back of the book that he’d forgotten about.

That chapter had only been read once, silently by him while vetting the book. In the very back was a story about a clever farmer who was set upon by and subsequently defeated a demon. The depiction of a demon wasn’t quite in line with typical real life ones, but the word was in the text. He, Dean, Castiel, and Jack had agreed to not voluntarily read that story to Shae, fearing that it might confuse or upset them. They had grown up in the city, after it had been purged of demons. The species was something of a messy nonissue, so the four of them had tried to raise Shae as close to human as possible.

A wave of uneasiness passed over him as he stared at the drawing of the fairy tale demon. He had a very complicated relationship with demons as a species. There was an undeniable affinity stemming from his manipulation by Azazel. By various metrics, he had been part demon until the spell that had torn Shae from him. Now, he kept himself functional through the use of a serum designed to mimic demon blood. The thought of himself, as he’d been while giving into his addiction filled him with so much shame.

He had that demonic side to him, but he was also famous in the right circles for killing demons. Back when he was younger, he’d done a significant amount of harm to demons as a hunter. He’d gotten ahold of Ruby’s knife when such a weapon was unheard of, then wielded that or an angel blade for decades. There had been a time when he’d tried to switch back to exorcism as his main technique, in order to limit human deaths, but that hadn’t always been possible.

Then he’d earned the title of Crujah by murdering countless demons in five weeks. He had literally lost count, high on his own power and the thrill of the hunt. That unparalleled massacre on the demons of the city had apparently been heard about in Hell because in forty-six years, no other demons had returned. He had unintentionally created a place for Shae to grow up where demons weren’t even a consideration. It was that small measure safer for her; at least he’d done that.

He turned back to the beginning of the book, then began reading through all the remaining stories that the kids had loved. The memories of their smiling faces warmed his heart a bit until he fell asleep in the comfortable armchair.

His dreams started out peacefully enough. He was walking through a lush botanical garden carrying Shae and Kesi as toddlers, one in each arm. As they walked, he told them about the different types of plants. When Kesi reached out towards a huge pink lily, Sam got closer. Shae extended their small hand as their eyes turned black, and the flower moved closer. Something was wrong; they didn’t have telekinesis. Before he could say anything, Kesi grabbed a petal. Starting from her touch and spreading outward, the plant rapidly shriveled and died. The kids started crying, startled by the sudden loss. He gently bounced them, desperate to comfort the pair, but at the same time he watched the rest of the garden, terrified that someone had seen what the children had done. Something had. He could hear movement in the distance. It almost sounded like slithering and whispers.

“Sam.”

He woke up to see Kesi and Jack standing in front of him. The two of them had expressions of disappointment and Kesi was anxiously fidgeting with the hem of her shirt. Something was wrong.

“What happened?” he asked while sitting up.

“It’s not terrible,” Kesi said in a move that wasn’t as reassuring as she’d hoped. “Shae went out a while ago. She just called. She’s on her way back with a few scrapes.”

His mind started racing, imagining what could’ve injured her and how severe the wounds were. A car or motorcycle accident seemed unlikely if she had walked away with only minor injuries. It could’ve been an encounter at the club gone wrong. He was so caught up thinking about the how and why, that he hadn’t yet considered what it would mean.

“Sam.” The sympathy in Jack's voice was learned over the years, but in this instance it was clearly sincere. “She’s bleeding.”

He placed the book of fairy tales on the small side table next to the armchair, then buried his face in his hands. His mind was static, but his chest felt tight with anguish. He nodded while composing him and stood up.

Jack offered, “I can take care of the injuries and cleaning up.”

“Thanks.” Sam patted Jack’s shoulder in appreciation. As he was leaving, Kesi reached out and squeezed his hand in a gesture of moral support.

He walked into his office, sealing the door behind him. After waiting a moment for the tightness in his throat to ease, he rested his thumb on the print reader, then said, “Turn over my security clearance, except for viewing privileges, to the rest of the family until further notice.”

With that taken care of, he paced the small office for a moment, before his eyes settled on the picture of Castiel that was mounted to the crime wall. That was just another instance of his utter helplessness. One point on the curve of him letting down his family. He was the most experienced of them. It was his responsibility to guide them and keep them safe, but he couldn’t.

Sam trudged over to his desk and sat down to watch the feed for the cameras inside the base. Shae pulled into the private garage and gingerly climbed off her motorcycle. When she took off her helmet, he could see that her eyebrow and cheek had split, dribbling a bit of blood. A couple bruises were visible on her face and when she took off her jacket, uncovering her forearms.

From the computer speakers, Dean’s voice tried to reassure him, “She’s okay,” but he didn’t respond. The injuries were minor. Whether she was okay remained to be seen.

He watched on the monitor as Jack helped her to the medical room, then began cleaning and suturing the small gashes. Sam leaned forward, resting his forehead against the computer screen. His fingers lightly touched the monitor, then he got up and poured himself a glass of synthehol. He drank half of it before he sat back down to watch the last few stitches. He could’ve done a better job of it.

Jack meticulously cleaned up the blood, then applied a cauterizing liquid to all of the cuts. After tossing the biohazardous trash into the incinerator, he instructed, “Computer, run the grade-six biofilters in all rooms.”

Shae looked up at the camera, then said, “I’m gonna grab a shower. We can debrief afterwards.”

Sam waited twenty minutes, just to be safe. Long enough that there wouldn’t be the scent of demon blood lingering in the base.


	10. The Client

Once it was safe and Shae was ready, the whole family met in the briefing room. Dean lingered on the wall-mounted screen, eager as anyone to find out what had happened. It was unusual that he saw someone come home in need of stitches.

Shae’s hair was still damp and they were not wearing a necklace. Their romper was a thick, grey, knit mess that was built for comfort. From their pocket, they pulled a man’s signet ring and tossed it onto the table. Its pearl centerpiece was held in place by steel fangs. “We’ve got cred with the wolves until either the next new moon or someone challenges me, so let’s move fast if we’re gonna shake them down for intel, because I do not have the stamina to do that again.”

Kesi’s eyes widened. “No fucking way.”

“You competed in the werewolves’ alpha contest?” Jack asked.

“I won it.” There was a hint of pride in their voice, but the way they glanced at Sam with guilt in their eyes tarnished the victory a bit.

“We were going to wait,” Sam said, trying to keep his tone calm so as not to start an argument. “Jack and I were gonna try tomorrow or the day after.”

“They have a fight club and we needed to earn some respect with them,” they countered. “I’m the strongest fighter we have. The bartender said it was bare-knuckles; that means claws-free. I took the chance.”

“You still could’ve been hurt— What did they even think you are?” Only a fool would think that a human could beat more than one werewolf in a fistfight.

“I said I was a composite and didn’t know all the pieces,” Shae replied. “Everyone bought that line pretty quickly after I pulled out my dick.” They sucked in some air sharply, probably still pained. “I gather that was the first time both binaries got in the ring for round two.”

Sam’s stomach knotted at the thought of them outing themselves on multiple levels to a group of strangers. “I know things are different than when I was your age, but there are still bigots out there—”

Shae slouched back in their chair and groaned, “Yeah. I know, Dad.”

“You can’t just make assumptions about other people’s tolerance,” he continued. “Wolves can be really caught up on ideas of masculinity—“

“You realize you’re warning me about bigots, then overgeneralizing about werewolves.”

He wanted to roll his eyes at the false equivalence, but stopped himself. “I’m not saying all of them.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s a cultural thing— I just don’t want something to happen to you.”

“I was in control of the situation.”

“You aren’t a wolf, and you went in there and risked insulting them by showing them up in their own den— completely independent of anything sexual.”

Shae crossed their arms in front of their chest. Before they could argue, Sam added, “I have more experience with wolves—“

They snapped back, “You have more experience with everything. Period.”

Sam pursed his lips.

“I’m forty-six years old and you still treat me like I’m sixteen.” They were candidly struggling to not shout. “I went out there and I fought ten wolves with my bare hands. I fucked just as many, then afterwards I did shots with two of them. That’s one single night of experience against your hundred fucking years of it. When was the last time you fucked a wolf?”

He dryly replied, “2006.”

There was a beat of silence before Kesi burst into laughter, breaking some of the tension.

Sam looked Shae in the eyes and said, “Point taken.” It was relatively low risk and they needed safe experience. “You work the cases as you see fit, within reason, but at least tell us what’s going on in case of an emergency. And I need you to hear what I’m telling you.”

In a short tone, they countered, “I always hear you.”

There was obvious tension, but he suspected that a certain amount of that was left over from the stress of the situation generally. On top of that, Shae seemed to often need a little time to cool back down after an argument, or a narrowly-avoided one. It was their Winchester blood coming through for sure. Sam couldn’t hold it against them; he was just as susceptible to those feelings; he was just better able to recover in the interest of pragmatism.

He nodded. “So we have an in with them?”

Shae cooly answered, “Through me, yes.”

* * *

Sam insisted on accompanying Shae to the Dire Fang the next day. He normally didn’t force himself into a mission, but one way or another, he was going to watch them potentially suffering the ramifications of the night before. All things being equal, he preferred to be able to personally punch anyone in the face who would insult his kid. Though, as far as Shae was concerned, he was there to help with the interview, should the opportunity present itself.

Shae hardly spoke to him over breakfast. He could practically see them shaking off the hurt feelings, trying to reach their normal caring dynamic before having to spend a few hours together. When Sam leaned forward to grab a napkin, they passed one to him. It was a small gesture of goodwill, but appreciated all the same.

Shae was using their handheld laser follicle suppressor on their jaw while watching the news at the kitchen table. Despite the shift towards less feminine, they weren’t inclined to let their facial hair grow. It had been almost a year since they had sported a tidy, delicate beard. Once the maintenance work was done, they started applying concealer to cover up some of the visible bruising.

Sam noticed that they’d missed a small patch where their jaw met the ear, then said, “There’s a spot. Let me help you.” He held out his hand. 

Shae wordlessly placed the applicator brush in his palm. He carefully covered the visible bruise, taking his time to make sure the makeup was blended naturally. It wasn’t tending to their injuries, but it was the best he could do for them.

When he gave the applicator back, they looked at him with sincere recognition. “Thanks, Dad.”

They both finished their mugs of sea brew, then got dressed for the outing. Sam opted to go slightly less formal than his usual consulting suit. He wore a streamlined stormy-blue turtleneck, charcoal slacks, and his normal wool overcoat. Shae didn’t bother with their binder, but the plum top they were wearing wasn’t cut to emphasize their breasts and their boots lacked a heel.

While driving them to Old Town, Shae absentmindedly tapped the steering wheel a bit to fill the silence. Neither seemed quite ready to acknowledge responsibility for the tension between them. It was obvious to Sam that they were both being a bit unreasonable, but that didn’t mean either of them was prepared to open a can of worms. Anyway, Shae was perfectly intelligent; of course they also understood what was going on. That’s why no in depth apologies had been exchanged, and yet they appeared to be safely passed actively arguing.

Eventually Shae broke the silence by asking him, “When was the last time you went out and did something fun?”

He wasn’t sure how to answer. It’d been a long time since he’d even thought about being recreational. The closest thing had probably been when Juneeta had invited him over to her place for a drink. At first glance, it might seem like a good thing, the sort of outing he might pursue, but opening up to some kind of relationship was dangerous to everyone involved. It was best that he not do anything that might get in the way of his responsibilities.

“I was never much for going to clubs, even before I got sick,” he replied.

“What about a museum?”

He huffed an unamused laugh at the thought. “Seeing things from my childhood on display like a medieval artifact. No thanks.”

“They have natural science museums, like botanical gardens,” they countered.

The memory of his panic in the dream, running through the garden, trying to protect Shae and Kesi, shook him. He subtly shifted, then took a moment to count the pedestrians, before simply saying, “I don’t know.”

“How about VR?”

Virtual reality simulations had reached a level of sophistication that was truly astounding; he would suggest terrifying. For the most part, the systems were designed to be distinguishable from real life. Even the ones that immersed the body in sensory dampening, liquid-suspension chambers and used targeted vibrations to create tactile input had a built in limit to the realism.

Of course, as with all meaningful things, there was a black market that pushed the activity to the point of abuse. The human experience was built from chemicals and electricity in the brain. It was as exploitable as any other machine.

He wasn’t dumb enough to chase an illusion, even one that was flimsy and legal. As problematic as the world was, he couldn’t let himself indulge in escapism. He knew better than anyone that addiction ran in their family. The cravings for demon blood still gnawed at him decades later. Synthehol was a problem, but honestly it took off enough of the sharp edge of the world that maybe it was mitigating an even worse lapse…. Though, that could’ve been some amount of dependency talking.

“If I crawl into one of those things, you might have to bury me in it.” He shook his head. “I can get by with books. It’s just a lower tech form of VR.”

Shae smiled a bit as they parked the car. They didn’t reach for the door. Instead they said, “You always did make the stories immersive. The others were fine and all, but I remember how each story felt like a bigger world when you read it to me.”

Having been a captive of the base for so long, he’d read all of the children’s books more than his brother, Castiel, or Jack. As he read the tales aloud, Shae or Kesi would ask questions, so he would improvise. Back in that frail state, maybe he couldn’t give them much, but he could try to make the world a bit more magical, even if only through stories.

“You kids never let anything slide,” he replied. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

The two of them got out of the car and began making their way towards the bar. As they walked, Sam heard a low buzzing sound in the distance. He stopped and looked around trying to determine which direction it was coming from. Down one of the side streets, he could see a cloud of dark brown specks fluttering in the air, moving their way. He and Shae were too far from the Dire Fang to retreat into it, and he wasn’t confident in trying to take shelter in any of the boarded up, dingy shops between where they were and their destination.

“Great,” he muttered sarcastically, while opening up his umbrella.

Shae furrowed their brow at his reaction, then noticed the approaching swarm of bugs. “It’s safe. They’re designed to not touch people.”

A swarm containing hundreds of thumb-sized, winged insects obscured a streetlight as it slowly lumbered forward. Rubbugs were one of the many tools developed to help combat the pollution crisis. Each one was lab-breed, then fitted with a tiny piece of hardware that allowed their rudimentary nervous systems to be controlled remotely. They were programmed to fly throughout the city, eating whatever trash they could, including the larger particulates in the air. In an abstract way, he could appreciate the function they served; it’s just that no one else seemed remotely concerned about the fact that those mindless drones could probably pick the flesh off of a person in less than a minute.

Sam moved to be right next to Shae as the bugs started to swarm above them. Once they were both under the umbrella, he pulled a lighter-sized switch from his pocket.

Shae rolled their eyes, having recognized the little device. “Dad, you—“

He pressed the button, sending a short-range false GPS signal. Hundreds of cybernetic bugs received the incorrect signal, telling them that they were actually half a mile up, and dove toward the ground as fast as they could to course correct. The downpour of locusts surrounded them, littering the sidewalk.

“You’re gonna get arrested,” Shae warned him.

“If you see a cop in Old Town, I’ll turn myself in. Anyway, it’s practically a stun.” He kept walking, crunching a few of the rubbugs under his shoes. When they were about forty feet away, the insects began recovering and buzzing about again, but any that dared approach them immediately plummeted back to the asphalt. When it was clear that the two of them were safe, he put away the umbrella and said, “I’m not saying they don’t provide a service. I’m just saying, one small tweak to their imprinting and they’ll eat through pedestrians like soft butter.”

“Not everyone is trying to figure out how to weaponize the world.”

“It doesn’t take everyone. Just one person is enough,” he countered, earning a small head tilt of acknowledgment.

* * *

It was obvious from the moment that they entered the Dire Fang that the demeanor had changed. The handful of patrons that were there only seemed to watch him with an air of wariness. The two of them went straight to the bar, which was being tended to by the same woman as before, then sat down on a pair of stools.

“Hey, Beatrice,” Shae greeted the bartender, having evidently achieved the status of being on a first-name basis. They flashed their Alpha of the Moon ring, then told her, “I’m back to try again.”

“Are you now an everyday kind of thing?” Beatrice asked as she wiped down the bar top in front of them.

“Not everyday. We just really need some info quickly.” They gestured at Sam. “This is my partner. We’re private investigators—”

“You aren’t some fucking hunter,” the woman interjected. Her tone was mild amusement, though she outwardly looked as tired and agitated as ever. “I saw you throw Liam last night. Humans can’t do that. And hunters won’t let whatever it is you are into their club.”

“I never said I was a hunter,” Shae replied.

Beatrice eyed them flatly. “Everyone knows what ‘private investigator’ means in a place like this.”

Sam looked over at Shae to see how they would handle the situation. He shifted on his stool to covertly get a better look at the three other patrons in the bar. His pistol was loaded with silver rounds and at the ready below his coat. Had the prospects of a fight-to-the-death been more likely, he might’ve interrupted and taken over for Shae, but he didn’t want to risk antagonising them more by stepping on their toes while things were still strained between the two of them.

Shae tried again. “Fine, I’m not a hunter. Never said I was— I’m investigating some killings, but I’m not a cop and I’m not paraservices.”

The bartender put down the pint glass she was holding, then rested her hands on the bar counter. In a deathly serious voice she said, “There’s no killings around here.”

There was absolute silence throughout the bar. Everyone was listening and watching for the first sign of danger or an insult that couldn’t be taken back.

“One of the victims is the sort that he might’ve been a regular here,” Shae clarified in an exceptionally calm voice. They’d learned the lesson that even within the comfort of the bar, ‘werewolf’ was a word that brought unwanted attention.

Beatrice studied them both for a moment, then turned to the group at a table in the corner. “Go find Greg.” Once the others had run off on the errand, she asked Shae and Sam, “What’ll ya drink?”

The two of them ordered beverages that toed the line between respectably potent and not enough to impair them. With drinks in hand, they went to a more defensible booth in the corner, then waited for their host. As they sat there, Sam’s eyes drifted over to the fighting cage. Thankfully, it had been cleaned out the night before. This whole thing would’ve been unbearable if he’d had to sit through an interview with a werewolf while trying to ignore the smell of Shae’s blood.

Shae tilted their head, listening to the music that was playing over some hidden speakers. It was an oddly paced tune on piano that seemed to have the rhythm of a predator lurking. Sure enough, the lyrics chronicled the resentment of a mistreated woman and the deaths of those who’d wronged her. It seemed apt for a werewolf bar.

“What are we listening to?” they asked before sipping their beer.

“Pirate Jenny by Nina Simone,” he replied. “She was a famous jazz musician last century.”

Shae nodded at the new information, then commented, “Jazz is fucked up. I like it.”

Sam couldn’t argue with that. He sipped his beer and casually cased the place, looking for the exits, possible hidden security features, and where weapons might be concealed. Only so much of the gruff personality of the bar had come through over the video feed. It smelled of cheap beer and cooking grease. There was faint squeaking from the ceiling when someone upstairs walked by— the building might’ve actually contained wood, albeit probably in poor condition from the ever-present moisture in the air. His eyes drifted up and he was relieved to not see a large water stain or patch of mold above their booth.

A few minutes later, a tall man in his forties with a slightly muscular build approached their booth. His light brown skin was marked with a couple visible scars, one of which cut up past his temple, into his short, curly black hair. He was wearing a grey shirt and trousers made of heavy fabric that contained numerous vertical pleats— probably to hide seams designed to expand when he changes form. He pulled up a chair to the end of their booth and sat down, but didn’t offer his hand as he introduced himself. “Gregory Blair.”

“Shae.” They placed the ring on the table in front of him, then lightly touched the cauterized cut on their cheek. “I don’t have it in me to defend the title. Anyway, it belongs with one of your people.”

“It belongs with the strongest,” Gregory corrected. “Even if that is a, what was it, composite? But I’m not about to force anyone to hold onto it.” He picked up the ring, then slipped it onto his finger. It was a perfect fit. “So what, you fought all those people just to return it the next day?”

“To return it to you,” Shae clarified, then tilted their head toward Sam. “This is Sam, my partner on this investigation.”

Gregory’s nostrils flared briefly, taking in some details of their scents. He glanced between his guests, but didn’t comment on whatever similarities he observed. Adjusting in his seat to get a bit more comfortable, he asked them, “One of my people is dead?”

“Yes.” Sam withdrew a small tablet from his pocket, then pulled up an image of the teenage werewolf victim. He’d intentionally picked the one where the boy looked the least like a corpse. “Do you know him?”

The man’s eyes dimmed as he exhaled slowly. “Henry Vogler— wasn’t part of the core pack. He would drop into the shadows for a couple of months at a time. Him and his friends would run odd jobs. They’d turn up randomly looking for handouts or bragging about some upcoming big score.” Gregory shook his head. “He was a good kid, but hunger makes good kids do dumb things.”

“Hunger?” Sam asked, all too familiar with the lengths one might go to to sate primal cravings.

“Not the instinct to hunt, per se. Just the need to survive,” Gregory assured them. “The days of picking off humans on the street are over. It’s too crowded here, too many cops, hunters, other monsters. Everyone knows that if you go feral in the city, you’ll be dead in a handful of moons.” He suddenly looked very tired. “Hearts will make you do dumb things, but killing for them is suicide. So we scrape by. You think it’s expensive to live here as a human? It costs $12,000 a month for hearts.”

“Your people hustle,” Shae speculated.

“Every day,” Gregory confirmed. “Some deal in drugs. Most hire themselves out as labor or enforcers. Sex work is hot-and-cold.”

Sam could see where prostitution might be a particularly risky endevour for a werewolf. They would either have to hide their status as a werewolf and thus have nothing to set them apart from the competition, or be incredibly careful of both hunters entrapping them or being coerced into biting a customer with a fetish. The whole thing sounded particularly unpleasant.

“Do you know where we can find his friends?”

Gregory idly rotated the ring on his finger as he considered the exposure that information would create. “We don’t want trouble with whatever killed Henry, but I don’t want our young people getting caught up with the cops.”

“We aren’t the cops or paraservice—“

“So you’re either the strangest or stupidest hunters I’ve ever seen?”

“We’re private investigators who happen to not shy away from nonhuman matters. I don’t care what you are.” Sam leaned forward and spoke with complete sincerity. “What I do care about is finding the people who killed a kid, and stopping them from killing other vulnerable people.”

Gregory solemnly thought for a moment before nodding. “No cops. No para. No racist hunters.” He held his hand out to Sam. “On your words.”

Sam shook his hand without hesitation. “I promise.”

When it was Shae’s turn, they took his hand with a quiet sort of reverence. Asking someone to swear like that had grown to be old-fashioned. It might’ve been the first time they’d ever been asked to keep a promise to someone on the job. They nodded solemnly as they shook his hand.

“On my word.”

The two of them left with notes detailing four of Henry’s friends, including pictures, and a map marked with the areas that they frequented. They walked back to the car in silence. Suddenly the case was more than a bounty or a pain in their ass. In a way, they had a client. And they had four teenagers who might be in danger.


	11. The Lead

Sam was lying in bed, staring at the dim illumination of his bedside clock on the ceiling. Something felt wrong. Rationally, a lot of things were wrong. A second round of clashes between protesters and police had broken out that evening. Nima had been prodded for the first time in decades. There was an assault team out there, possibly looking for the chip that was down the hall. And they still didn’t know why the damn thing was worth murdering so many people.

But those worries were taking a back seat in his mind to something new: how did a teenager with no disposable income or savings afford a pleasure implant? He hadn’t read up on the tech as much as Kesi, but even he knew that installing the basic models weren’t cheap. It required surgery, plus the hardware and subscription dues. And the implant that Henry had had was probably the same advanced tech that had been found in the third victim.

Something just wasn’t adding up.

Sam closed his eyes, eventually falling asleep. In his dream, Shae was walking through a hallway that was dimly lit, periodically punctuated by the flash of a red warning light. An alarm blared in the distance, but they were moving with purpose, unconcerned with the alarm itself. They opened a door to find a sterile laboratory. Every surface was pristine white and brushed stainless steel— except for the exam tables, which were sullied by brown, tacky blood. They cautiously moved past the tables and around a corner. 

Tucked in the back of the laboratory were a set of five large standing tanks, each big enough to hold a person; the leftmost tank was. Suspended in the pink fluid was a nude man. He was one of the teenage werewolves. Two dozen tubes and wires were imbedded throughout his body, but the majority of them were focused around his neck and the base of his skull. Despite the respiratory hose attached to his mouth, he floated there like a corpse.

Shae walked up and placed their hand on the tank. It was body temperature. When they tapped the glass, the man jerked and flailed in surprise. He saw them, took a moment to process something, then began banging on the glass from the inside. His eyes were clenched shut and he was engulfed in fluid, but the way his face was contorted, the kid was crying.

Sam woke up with a jolt, then rubbed his face and counted to ten. He slowly went through his serum routine, opting to suffer the consequences of a lower dosage. It would leave him feeling slightly ill throughout the day, but these metered out episodes of suffering prevented him from reaching a dangerous level of self-medicating.

He grabbed his cane from on top of his dresser, and used it as he walked down the hall to the bathroom. During his morning shower, he had to hold onto the metal rails that were mounted to the tile wall. After running his fingers through his damp hair, he checked to see if the 6% serum drop had been enough of a shock to thin his hair— so far it hadn’t. He took his time getting dressed, then made his way straight to his office. There were fair odds he would’ve dropped a mug of sea brew or bowl of food held in his offhand, so he skipped breakfast altogether. Anyway, his stomach wasn’t settling properly.

He apologetically touched the photograph of Castiel as he passed it, but went for the chair without stopping. His knees and back were acting up, aggravated by the rest of his body reeling against him. He made a quick adjustment to the lumbar support on his chair, then sat down and hung his cane on the edge of his desk.

After logging in, he began doing the logistical work of getting status updates from everyone and setting the agenda for the day. He informed everyone that he wasn’t feeling great, so he wouldn’t be going to look for the werewolf teens. The task ended up falling upon Jack and Shae, since Kesi was taking another shot at sorting through the implant’s code.

Jack was out running down a quick lead on a lower priority, yet higher paying case, so Sam messaged Shae, suggesting that they get ready to go meet him in the field and begin their canvassing for the werewolves. They hadn’t yet left the base when Jack overrode the comm line with an alarming message.

“I’ve got a tail.”

Sam sat up a bit more and enlarged Jack’s video feed. “Did you get a clear look at their face?”

“No.”

“See if you can inconspicuously glance or catch their reflection,” he instructed while scrolling back the video feed to see if he could make anything out.

After a few seconds, Jack whispered, “Check the window.”

Sam reverted the feed to live, then scrolled back a moment until he saw a man with lavender highlights in his greased back black hair. While colored hair was commonplace, that still was not the most inconspicuous of tails. It was a subtle hello, just for him.

“No threat,” he assured Jack. “That’s Clint, one of Nima’s underlings. She’s probably trying to figure out what the hell we’re up to. Make a few random stops, then do a double-back slip between the metro and the alleys in Little Singapore,” he suggested. “If you want, I can check the train schedule and feed you the route in real time.”

“Thanks.”

Guiding Jack through the process of losing his tail took a little under an hour. It was a chore under normal circumstances, but his pursuer having a keen sense of smell elevated the whole thing to a literal headache. Partway through, Sam actually dug through one of his desk drawers and found some painkillers to help. Having sufficiently peeled the vampire off of him, Sam directed Jack to a meet up location with Shae, then leaned back in his chair to take a few minutes to recover.

He hated when his stamina was shit. It had hardly been two hours and he was already in need of rest. Back before getting sick, he’d been able to pull thirty-hour days running intense ops. Now, without a significant amount of medication, he was wearing thin too quickly. He’d always thought of himself as a man of endurance, but he’d gone from marathons to sprints to hobbling about while the kids were in the field.

“Sam,” Kesi said as she entered with a bowl of oatmeal and a mug of sea brew. She placed the bowl down on the desk, then handed him the mug. “Dad told me you skipped breakfast.”

“My stomach was bothering me, but sometimes the need for caffeine wins out.” He cautiously sipped the sea brew, which made his stomach ache, but not as much as he would’ve expected.

Kesi’s eyes lingered on the cane hanging on the desk. “Did you decrease your meds or is it something else?”

“I cut back by 6% today,” he replied. “It’s just a spike. I figure tomorrow I’ll start tapering down, 4% reduction from there, then 2%. That’ll set me back to a stable level.”

Kesi stood there for a few seconds, checking the math in her head. “I know that I’m not…. I’ve been looking at Dr. Pereira’s notes on the serum. Maybe we could try to tweak it? Between the two of us, we know the basics.”

“I appreciate that you want to help, but it works well enough.”

“You keep teetering on the dosage and going through these withdrawal episodes.”

“It’s just ‘cause I’m impatient.” Sam set down the half-drunk mug of sea brew, then picked up his oatmeal and assured her, “I’ll practice better self care.”

Kesi looked at him skeptically, but didn’t voice any doubt aloud. Instead she gently squeezed his shoulder. “I’m gonna get back to work, but please let me know if you need anything. It’s okay to let people help you.”

“I’m fine, really,” he told her, then added, “Thank you.”

He started eating his breakfast as she left. Even though the oat paste felt like cement in his stomach, he kept forcing it down. When he was most of the way through the bowl he finally couldn’t stand it anymore and gently shoved it across the desk, away from him. As he drew his hand back, he noticed that he was having tremors on top of everything else. He gripped the armrests, then leaned his head back and closed his eyes. 

It was just a miserable day; that was part of life, especially for someone like him. Tomorrow would be a bit better. He knew exactly what was making him feel that way. It was an entirely predictable outcome of him trying to rush the drawback process in an attempt to get the unpleasantness over faster. He tried to convince himself that this was better than spending the next week feeling fatigued and off. It wasn’t ideal, but at least he could still monitor the mission. He opened his eyes and watched their progress, though he didn’t bother sitting up more or scooting forward.

Once Jack and Shae had met up in the field, Shae drove them through the mixed use commercial-industrial neighborhood that Henry had frequented with his friends. They worked their way through the streets, checking pedestrians and loiterers against the photos they had. Nearly every intersection had a few people on the corner, watching for a potential customer or mark. If Shae slowed the car to a crawl, it seemed that inevitably one or two people would pull back their coats to show off either flesh, drugs, or stolen tech for sale. 

After almost an hour of searching, Jack said, “I see one of them.” Without raising his hand above the dashboard, he pointed at a kid that couldn’t have been older than fifteen, leaned against the side of a nearby factory. “He’s Jonah Matherson.”

Sam opened a new tab to review the limited information they had received from Gregory on him, then advised, “He was arrested a few months ago. Be gentle with him.”

“Arrested for what?” Shae asked.

“Doesn’t say.”

Shae parked in front of Jonah, drawing his attention. The kid stood up, then glanced around before cautiously approaching the car. He recoiled a bit when Shae and Jack got out of the vehicle.

“What are you looking to buy?” Jonah asked. He held his long winter coat tightly around himself as he looked them up and down.

“Information,” Shae told him. “That’s all.”

The boy laughed dryly. “First you guys fuck me with entrapment, then you want me to be a snitch. Just take me in already. I’m not—“

“We aren’t cops,” Jack interjected.

“We came to talk to you with Gregory’s permission,” Shae added, which seemed to disarm the kid a bit.

Jonah took a few steps towards them, but still stayed out of arm’s reach. His eyes were wide and he leaned his head forward a bit. In a quieter voice, he asked, “He sent you? What’s going on?”

“Do you know where your other friends are, the ones you run with?”

Jonah shook his head, then moved even closer, ignoring his safety. “They were acting weird. Henry scored some kind of a big deal this summer. He tried to cut us all in, but I was picked up by the cops before I got to the job. When I got out of jail a few weeks later, nobody had seen the boys. I tried….” He swallowed hard, but somehow kept himself from tearing up. “I figured they got pinched. Sold for pieces or—“ He pulled the coat so tightly around himself that he threatened to tear the seams. His voice cracked as he asked, “They dead?”

In a calm yet empathetic voice, Shae said, “Henry is.”

Jonah crouched down for a moment, then sat down on the wet sidewalk. As he reached up to cover his face, his coat fell open, revealing that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Several bruises were forming on his chest and around his wrists.

A few of the other grifters nearby saw that he was on the ground and started approaching them. Jack moved into a defensive position, in case the bystanders decided to start a fight. When Shae pulled a tissue from their pocket and handed it to Jonah, the others backed off a bit. Despite that, Jack kept staring them down while Shae took the lead on the interpersonal portion of the mission.

Shae knelt in front of the young werewolf. After giving him some time to cry, they told him, “We don’t know what happened to the others. We’re trying to find them, hopefully before they end up like Henry.” They waited a beat before adding, “Jonah, where were you supposed to go with the others?”

The boy peeked between his fingers at them, then wiped away a few tears. He looked completely terrified.

“We can give you a ride back to the Dire Fang,” Shae offered. “It’s not safe out here. We don’t know if they’re targeting your kind, but you know something and these people are dangerous. You need to stay with the pack, you understand me?”

Jonah nodded as he covered up his bruises. “I’m not getting in your car. I’ll go back, but I’m not— I just won’t.”

“Okay.” Shae raised their hands in nonhostility. “We aren’t gonna hurt you. We aren’t gonna force you to do anything.” They reached into their pocket and pulled out a preloaded card, then held it out to him. “That’s $6,000. Enough so you don’t have to work for a couple weeks. Take the metro. Stick to the pack. Keep your head down as long as you can. And when it comes time to work, do it far from here.”

His fingers closed on the other side of the card, but Shae didn’t immediately let go.

“Where was the job?”


	12. Bleak Odds & Outlooks

“How’re the feeds?” Jack asked over the comm.

It had taken the better part of two days to covertly get a dozen different cameras in place around the building Jonah had directed them to. The place appeared to be a combination of office space stacked on top of a fabrication shop. There were only two entrances, both guarded. The first four floors lacked windows, making it something of a fortress. Even if they could breach the windows on the top twenty floors, it was still an intimidatingly large complex to infiltrate. So they had to watch and research, hoping for an opening.

Sam double checked each video and audio channel before replying, “Everything looks good.”

From her position in the abandoned building across the street, Kesi muttered, “Next shift, I’m bringing more snacks.”

“Want me to run some up to you?” Jack offered. He was just a block away, placing the last camera.

Sam was just about to warn him that too much moving around the perimeter might attract attention, when Kesi said, “It’ll look weird if you circle around the building to me. Don’t worry about it. I won’t starve over the next three hours.”

With all the equipment finally set up, they would transition to only having one person on site, available to immediately deal with any technical difficulties or improvisations. Having fewer people loitering around meant that each of them would have less time in the area, making them that much more forgettable. They also took the precaution of switching styles of clothes and minor cosmetic changes between iterations. For example, Jack’s hair was temporarily dyed black while he was within the sightlines of the target.

“You know,” Jack muttered over the comm. “Between the tech here and the credit chit for the wolf, we’re losing money on this case.”

Sam briefly muted himself while sighing, then replied. “It’s a charity case. We work these ones for moral reasons.” He pursed his lips before adding, “Anyway, if there’s a chance that the bad guys can trace things back to us, I want to find out who they are.”

“Self preservation is worth the cash,” Jack conceded.

He almost corrected him again, that they were capable of having multifaceted and complex motivations, but decided not to bother at that point. This lesson was an ongoing issue for Jack. The kid was more financially driven than everyone else in the family, not because he was greedy—Jack could actually be very generous at times. No, Sam suspected that, since money involved numbers, it was simply a value calculation that Jack felt more comfortable with.

Over the comm, Kesi said, “I think there’s something off about some of these guys.”

Sam pulled up the video and saw a group of two men and a woman exit a car, then immediately enter the building. Even tabbing through all the feeds, he couldn’t get a good look at their faces.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Just something in my gut,” Kesi replied. “That’s kinda weird, isn’t it?”

It wasn’t like her to operate on hunches. Her senses could pick up details that humans couldn’t catch, particularly related to death, but that had always been observations through touch or smell. She’d always been able to identify and articulate what she sensed. Even when she’d learned that the victims hadn’t died a horrific or malicious death, she had been able to describe it, even if she hadn’t ever experienced it before.

“You can’t smell them from that far away,” Sam mused aloud.

“Is it something about their appearances or movement?” Jack asked.

Sam replayed the videos. “I’m not seeing anything special from the angles covered by the cameras. You have a slightly different perspective, being there in person. Maybe it’s something the rest of us just missed.”

“Maybe,” Kesi replied. “I’m getting tired. I could just be off my game.”

“Come back home and get some rest,” Sam instructed. “No point straining yourself. Surveillance is a long game.”

They slowly began assembling a dossier of over a dozen people who were going to and from the building. Once Sam was feeling a bit better, he joined in the rotation of observing from one of the nearby locations. There had been considerable debate over whether it was wise to have someone on site. They had numerous cameras after all. But being there in person gave more of the little details. Like the way suspects six and nine didn’t wear jackets, even when the night air turned suddenly chill.

Sam was taking his six-hour shift at the monumentally boring task when he noticed a crow pecking at one of the cameras. With three solid hits, the hardware tumbled from the wall where it was mounted. The downed camera was located not far from the suspect building and it wouldn’t be unheard of for one of the suspects to walk by it on their way to or from the facility. 

In two hours, Jack would come by to relieve him. That was a fairly long time to leave a piece of equipment exposed like that. After consulting the schedules of the others, it was clear that everyone else was off doing other chores.

“Camera four just got knocked down by a bird,” he informed everyone. “I’m gonna go pick it up before one of them trips over it.”

“Do you have an opening?” asked Jack.

“It’s been fairly quiet, but there are a few pedestrians every couple minutes. I’m just gonna play the old man who spots something shiny on the ground.”

“Sounds good. I can reinstall it after dark,” Shae offered.

“I’ll let you know what kind of shape it’s in when I get it back here,” he replied, then stood up, grabbed his coat, and left.

He made a little show of walking slowly, though he hadn’t brought his cane. That would’ve been a nice prop. As he passed the area where the camera had fallen down, he made a point of looking around, but avoided staring at the suspect building too much. The enemy undoubtedly had security cameras as well. He nonchalantly looked down at the ground, spotted the camera, then feebly bent down to pick it up. For better or worse, he was having a subpar day with his joints, giving him a sincere wince of knee pain as he collected the grape-sized camera. He slipped it into his pocket, then continued on a nice wide path away from the other cameras and stakeout positions they’d been using. There was a metro stop roughly twenty minutes away. Once on the train, he could take it one stop over and approach his previous stakeout position from a less conspicuous direction or simply head home.

For several minutes, Sam thought that he was in the clear, then he caught a reflection in the glossy black glass of the building next to him. There were two men walking about fifty feet behind him. He’d noticed them across the street, four blocks and two turns back. When he climbed the stairs to the upper grate walkway, they followed.

Climbing to the second-tier sidewalk helped identify them as a tail. Unfortunately, it also made it clearer that he was aware of their presence. The two men’s footsteps could be heard over the hum of the traffic below and beside them. Sam strained his ears, waiting to hear the steps rush toward him. To make matters worse, there wasn’t a good place to evade them while out in the open like that. There were a handful of people around, not the crowd that would be necessary to attempt losing them inside of.

He tried to read the directory screen for the next building with an entrance on his level. The text was too small to make out, but the colorful, playful fonts hinted at a few dozen retail or entertainment establishments. It would have to do.

As he turned into the building, Sam could see one of the men say something, but the pair’s body language didn’t seem like they were speaking to each other. They were probably using comms with someone else.

“Aila, mayday,” Sam whispered as he quickly ducked down the first auxiliary hallway.

The place was a labyrinth of narrow corridors that twisted and wove through small shops. Transparent duriglass walls displayed the shelves of goods, creating a cluttered, claustrophobic feeling. The sound of hurried footsteps followed him, carried by the hard surfaces, with nowhere to escape. 

He hit a dead end, then doubled back to the last intersection as fast as he could. His lower back twinged, chronic ache having been aggravated by the sudden motion.

Over the comm, Aila informed him, “Support is fourteen minutes out. Police assistance would be available in seven to ten minutes. Do you wish for me to call 911?”

He hated the idea of the police getting involved with his investigation, or whatever other mess he’d gotten himself into, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Four-to-seven minutes of delay could easily prove lethal.

“Yes,” he whispered.

A man’s voice echoed through the halls. “Fourth floor.”

Sam glanced up at the small red sign attached to the ceiling, indicating the fire evacuation route. He rushed down the path towards the closest stairwell. Two women started muttering in outrage as he pushed past them, but he didn’t have time to be polite, even if their frustration might be a breadcrumb for his pursuers.

He opened the door to the steel, utilitarian stairwell, then listened. There wasn’t any sound but for the rustle of shoppers in the maze he’d just left and the pounding of bass-heavy music somewhere above. Rather than risk meeting anyone who might start ascending the stairs, he decided to go up a floor, cut through to the opposite side of the building, then take an elevator to the ground floor.

He was half a flight up, when a door on one of the floors below him opened. His eyes flicked back to the door he’d just come through. It was still slowly swinging closed. As quietly as he could, he started climbing the stairs, desperate to put some more distance between him and his pursuers. The door closed with an audible click.

“He’s in the stairwell.”

Sam ran up the stairs, heart pounding. Tactical considerations were out the window. He threw open the door to the fifth floor, then sprinted in. The music was louder, coming from somewhere nearby on that level. Taking in the scene at a glance, he could see there was a club about a hundred feet away. A sign down the hallway hinted at a second entrance.

The footsteps of his pursuers echoed in the stairwell behind him and through a hallway to the left. He rushed into the club, hoping to slip through and out the back exit. 

Scores of people filled the dance floor, jumping and writhing to the music. Each beat sent a wave of color pulsing out along the floor and ceiling. The walls were lined with long silvery glass bar counters that were swarmed by patrons looking for perfectly proportioned drinks made by a rudimentary robotic bartender.

Sam tried to skirt the core of the dance floor, where most of the dancing was happening, but the lines at the bars blocked any attempts to move along an edge. 

He was about halfway through when he noticed a man in the direction he was headed, who wasn’t dancing. The guy was scanning the room with an annoyed expression on his face. Hardly someone out looking for a good time. He was blocking an exit.

Sam tried to crouch down slightly to help him hide amongst the mob. His knees and back reeled at the move, but he stopped himself from buckling. Through the bobbing sea of people, he looked around trying to find another exit. There was a door behind the opposite bar that might lead to an employee area, possibly a place to hide for the next few minutes, if not an actual escape route.

The waves of colored light that moved throughout the room splintered as the song picked up, creating a fractal pattern across the ceiling. Sparks poured down from hidden seams, showering the dancers with light. The crowd cheered and bounced harder. A couple dancing next to Sam bumped into him, throwing off their rhythm, creating a blip in the otherwise moving mass of people. 

Sam hastily looked around to see four men scattered around the club watching him. Two of them had been the ones tailing him outside. Now that he had a moment to process, he recognized a couple of them from the stakeout. He stopped right there in the middle of the dance floor. With them blocking the exits, there wasn’t much point in continuing to run; he had nowhere to go.

“How much time, Aila?”

“One police vehicle is approximately five minutes away,” the AI whispered in his ear over the pulsating song.

He slowly raised his hands above his head, signaling his forfeit, then began walking towards the closest one. To his surprise, the goon moved forward to meet him. That wasn’t tactically ideal for either of them. Both of them would have a hard time fighting or moving while surrounded by dancing people—which wasn’t the worst thing when one was trying to stall for five minutes. Unfortunately, if these were the same people that attacked the police station, they wouldn’t sweat the innocent bystanders. They were standing in a sea of hostages.

“Let’s do this somewhere more private,” Sam told the man when they were within earshot.

“Not so fast.” 

The guy nodded behind Sam. The other three thugs had joined them, creating an odd sort of parle, that the dancers around them tried valiantly to ignore. The one in front of him pulled a pistol from his shoulder holster and trained it on Sam.

It took nearly all of his willpower to not roll his eyes at the incredibly reckless move. He couldn’t help it. Sam hissed, “Put that fucking thing away!” He eyed the gun, as the man behind him started patting him down, right there on the dance floor. “The weapon isn’t necess—” 

There was a scream next to him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a woman stumbling backwards into several other patrons, recoiling from the firearm. Her reaction immediately drew the attention of those around her, alerting them to the threat in turn. Everything was about to go from bad to worse.

“Gun! Gun!” one of the dancers yelled above a drop in the music.

Sam shifted his feet, bracing himself for chaos. He didn’t take his eyes off the gun, but in the periphery he noticed all the thugs glancing around as a few bystanders started trying to run. The one who’d been patting him down turned away, distracted by any number of things all happening far too quickly. The man with the gun tensed, clearly uncomfortable with the sudden development. It was a rookie reaction, much like pulling the gun on a dance floor had been. As the person on the other side of the pistol, Sam didn’t find that very confidence-inspiring. 

As soon as the guy’s eyes flicked to check some movement, Sam grabbed the gun and pushed the barrel up, towards the ceiling. Two shots rang out before he could bring his elbow down on the goon’s collarbone, shattering it, then disoriented him with a quick uppercut. He swiftly disarmed the dazed man, taking the gun from him, and turned it on the others.

Everyone in the club was running for the exits, clearing the floor around them. The screams of hundreds of people clashed with the throbbing bass of the music. For a split second, the terrified cries of so many people shook him. Memories of dozens of voices calling out in pain or for help from below the rubble of a collapsed building. Bleeding pedestrians trying to dig them from the jagged metal and glass with their bare hands—

“One police vehicle three minutes out,” Aila informed him, shaking him from the memory. A few seconds later, she added, “Ten additional police vehicles four minutes out.”

He tried to stand with the confidence he wished he felt. These thugs were young and inexperienced, but they could probably take him down if they rushed him. Hopefully, they could see how comfortable he was with a gun. Ideally, it should scare the hell out of them. He silently watched them shift their weight in what he hoped was a nervous tell instead of a subtle attempt to spread out and surround him. A couple dull pops were audible against the thudding beat as one of them flexed his fists, cracking a few knuckles. 

There were at least two minutes to kill before the cops got there and he didn’t feel like filling it with him getting jumped the moment he started firing, so he stalled.

“Who do you work for?” he shouted over the music.

They were all painted in alternating flashes of azure and teal light. Two of the men exchanged glances of unknown significance. The one with the broken collarbone just knelt on the ground, clutching his chest in pain. Another moved his mouth, conveying some message to either support on the other end of the comm, or saying something to the other three. He didn’t know which was worse, that they might all charge forward in a coordinated attack or that more of them would come pouring in the doors.

“One police vehicle one minute out. Ten additional police vehicles two minutes out.”

Standing around with a gun trained on several people at the site of a reported shooting when the police arrived was probably the worst thing he could do. Especially with everyone so riled up from the attack on the precinct and the subsequent riots. The pulsing of the music and colored lights was speeding up, much like the beat of his heart. He’d have to act, but he waited as long as he dared.

“One police vehicle has arrived.”

In a single motion, he ejected the gun’s magazine while pulling off the slide, then threw the two pieces in opposite directions. The four men gawked for a second at him disarming himself, but they recovered too quickly for him to attempt running for it. His knees were shot from the stairs and everything else. He was outnumbered. And they all appeared no more than half his age. Turning his back on them would just result in him being tackled from behind, so he planted his feet and raised his fists.

One of the thugs actually laughed… understandably so. Sam let out a sigh as the music reached the peak of its crescendo. White and lilac strobe lights flickered, casting every movement as a series of still images.

Two of the men rushed him at the same time. He dodged one entirely and punched the other straight in the nose. Sam could feel the small bones in the attacker’s face shatter and warm blood coat his fist, but he couldn’t react before being hit in the stomach. He pitched forward from the impact, but turned to the side in an attempt to let the attacker’s momentum carry him forward and out of range for an immediate counterattack. The thug with the bloodied face collapsed and his head hit the hard dance floor with a dull thwack.

Before Sam could straighten up and turn back towards the rest of the goons, one of them tackled him. He landed hard on his already-sore back, stunning him for a split second. Without getting up, he kicked, landing a hard hit to his attacker’s balls, crumpling the man to the ground. Before Sam could get back on his feet, a fist came down on his face, splitting his lip. 

“Everybody freeze!”

Sam’s head rolled to the side to see a pair of police officers standing just inside the doorway, weapons drawn. Two of the thugs stood up and put their hands on their heads, while the one with the broken collarbone weakly raised his one good arm. The fourth one was lying face down in a small pool of blood a few feet away. Sam didn’t bother trying to position himself to make his inevitable handcuffing any easier; they’d get to it when they get to it. Instead, he closed his eyes to stop the room from spinning. He couldn’t remember the last time he was so relieved to be arrested.

* * *

Sam sat in the small, sterile interrogation room. The arresting officer hadn’t handcuffed him to the stainless steel table in front of him, but that didn’t mean he was out of the woods. Based on the whispers drifting through the station as he’d been brought in, nobody quite knew what to make of him. He was a familiar enough face, and one that was disarmingly aged, but he’d been discovered in a precarious situation.

Technically, he’d been the first one to call the police. Between that and the security footage from the club, he didn’t doubt that he’d be released. Unfortunately, altercations like that meant a lot of paperwork, and if there was one thing that was certain it was that police hated paperwork.

While waiting for his questioner, he rested his elbows on the table. In his exhaustion, he meant to bury his face in his arms, but his split lip stung when touched. An EMT had tried to give him more extensive first aid, but he’d declined everything other than stitches and a cold pack. He didn’t want to risk having medications interacting with his serum, even painkillers. The fact that he was stubbornly refusing medical assistance was unnerving the police. Hopefully, that meant that they’d release him quickly in order to avoid having him die in their custody and the additional paperwork that would entail.

He could hear the muffled bursts of someone yelling in the distance. It wasn’t unheard of for there to be an ambient level of chaos out there, especially now with the social tensions, but he still eyed the locked door. He was stuck in there, while who-knew-what-threats might be just outside. Somebody disliked him enough to have already thrown four grunts at him.

When the door opened, he could finally make out the shouting. “They will eat the oppressors! The Great Old Gods return! Ethereal saviors—“ The door closed, turning the ravings into a soft murmur once more.

He wanted to suggest to the officer that had just entered, that the tranquilizer he’d passed on earlier might be used on the cultist yelling out there, but he decided not to be cute. Nobody was in the mood for it.

The man who had just entered was stout with a dark complexion, tightly cropped hair, and bloodshot eyes. He wore the uniform of a desk officer, adorned with insignia that hinted at some noteworthy rank. 

“I’m Lieutenant Ramos,” he muttered as a mere formality before sitting down across from Sam and getting to the heart of the issue. “There’s a dead body in my morgue. Care to explain that?”

That was news to him. If he’d had to guess, it was the attacker that had ended up in a puddle of blood. He had managed a solid hit to the guy’s sinuses even before he’d hit the ground face first. There was bound to be enough video footage that he could be ruled out of involvement with any other death that might’ve incidentally occurred. Ramos could’ve given more details to narrow him in on a specific moment or person. The open ended question was just probing.

“I was attacked by at least four people,” Sam replied. “I called it in. To the extent I was involved with one of their deaths, it was self-defense.” He tried to frame it in as close to denial as possible, even to the point of not specifiying the victim’s sex.

“You know, most innocent people tell a story.” Ramos leaned back in his chair, then took a small pill bottle from his pants pocket. He popped the handful of tablets into his mouth and began chewing them. “Innocent people aren’t such fucking technocrats.”

“Cautious people can’t be innocent?”

“It’s like you guys live to be a pain in my ass. I swear, for once I’d just like a straight answer.” Ramos turned to one of the security cameras mounted in the corner of the room and said, “Cut it.”

For a moment, Sam expected the recording to be stopped, allowing the officer to rough him up, but no beating came. Instead, Ramos’s eyes flicked to a set of four lights above the door, the sort that warned when rooms were being monitored. Three of the lights went out. Once the record had been restricted to a single channel, with presumably higher clearance, Ramos tried again.

“The brass are willing to overlook this whole vigilante-hunter thing that you people do, but that doesn’t mean you get free rides on murder. Self-defense doesn’t work as well for trained killers.”

“Look at me,” Sam replied, for once grateful that he looked like he should’ve retired thirty years earlier. “Do you really think that in a match up between me and four able-bodied—“

“Your file ties you to seven bodies in the last three years.”

“There are bodies in this line of work,” Sam countered. “If there weren’t, then either there wouldn’t be any victims or there wouldn’t be any closed cases.”

Ramos pulled an evidence baggie containing the surveillance camera that had been knocked down by the crow from his pocket. He placed it on the table between them. “Who’re you staking out?”

“That’s confidential.”

“Cases aren’t confidential if we’re the ones who give it to you,” Ramos replied. “You were recently granted clearance to investigate three murders under the same bounty. Is the surveillance for that case?”

“Missing persons. Private party,” Sam answered dryly. “Like I said, confidential.”

The officer stared at him for a long while with an intensity meant to slice right through him, but Sam had plenty of experience being interrogated. The idea that this guy would get anything useful out of him was laughable at best.

“Am I free to go?” he asked. “Or am I really gonna have to demand a lawyer?”

Ramos silently fumed for a moment, then stood up and moved towards the door. When Sam made to follow him, he pointed at Sam and said, “Not yet.”

Sam settled himself back in the chair. Even after Ramos left, the recording light array didn’t change. Whatever was happening was still classified. That was unnerving. He was about ready to get up and try his hand at walking right out of the station when the door opened. 

Juneeta walked in. She wasn’t in her uniform; her hair wasn’t even braided. She’d been off duty, but had probably come in when she’d heard that he’d been arrested. Someone had contacted her.

She stood by the table for a moment, caught between sitting down across from him in the same chair that Ramos had just occupied or possibly moving closer to him. He could see the worry in her eyes, but thankfully she didn’t look up at the cameras.

“It’s not as bad as it looks.” He’d been referring to his beaten face, but was also fine with that being mistaken for general reassurance.

“Sam, talk to me.”

She was the good cop. He wasn’t sure whose idea it was for her to go in and make nice with him. Ideally, the play wasn’t specifically designed to take advantage of the fact that they’d recently had sex— either that someone had found out, or worse, that the manipulation had been her idea. He wasn’t in love with her or anything, but as far as he was concerned they were friends. Having their relationship leveraged against him, intentionally or not, was disheartening.

He wanted to help her. He wanted to clue her into what was happening, but she was a cop. Regardless of where her loyalties actually lay, their interactions were being observed and recorded. Ramos might’ve cut three of the surveillance feeds before bringing up the not-so-secret existence of hunters, but those moments were still privy to the few with sufficient intelligence clearance. And he didn’t trust those nameless, faceless people in positions of power.

“I’m sorry,” Sam told her. “I made a promise to a client. I can’t let you in until I make sure some kids are safe. No cops.”

She stared at him flatly. “You know what it sounds like when you say something like that. It sounds like you’re about to do something illegal.”

“There isn’t any evidence to hold me.”

Juneeta pinched the bridge of her nose as she thought. She leaned forward and quietly said in his ear, “Let us help you. I can assign support if you give me something. These guys who went after you were low level grunts. Whoever sent them could do it again. You aren’t in any shape to get jumped like that again. This is dangerous.”

“I know,” he sighed.

She opened her mouth to say something, but stopped short. When it came down to it, she’d just have to trust him. He felt like a hypocrite for not being able to bring himself to return the favor right then. With a faint reluctance in her voice, she told him, “You’re free to go.”

Sam nodded to her, hoping that she’d understand that him walking out without giving her anything wasn’t a reflection on things between the two of them. He got up from the chair and she began escorting him out of the interrogation room. They walked out into the main cubicle-filled processing floor. 

The nut job who had been screaming about the Old Gods was gone, but a small crowd of officers had formed in order to place bets about his blood alcohol content. The three surviving thugs that had fought him were nowhere to be seen, presumably having been processed and dumped into a holding cell already. More of the police than usual had hostile demeanors, watching strangers through cold distant eyes— They’d been hit by attackers three floors down, about a week earlier. Some wariness was to be expected. A handful of people in sharp suits with hair that could’ve been perfectly cast in resin where speaking with officers adorned with the highest ranks, honors, and contractually-binding authority. The place was giving him heartburn. 

The two of them had barely gotten forty feet when Sam realized that something was wrong. That figurative heartburn was quickly turning into a gnawing ache. He suddenly felt warm and clammy. His heart started pounding, making him light headed. He reached out to grab the nearest cubicle, but he couldn’t quite make it.

Juneeta gripped his upper arm, trying to help stabilize him. “Sam, are you okay? Sit down. I’ll get the doctor.”

He let her force him into a chair, but shook his head as he tapped his watch. “Aila, my heart.”

After taking a moment to observe his vitals, the AI replied, “You appear to be experiencing symptoms consistent with an intense episode of anxiety or panic.”

“Nothing panicked me.” He looked up at Juneeta, but kept speaking to his watch. “What caused it?”

“I would speculate that it was sensory input that you didn’t consciously register.”

A small crowd was forming to see what the excitement was about. Even one of the fucking businessmen strolled over to gawk at the spectacle.

Juneeta knelt down next to him, to be at his eye level, pulling his gaze away from the onlookers. In a quiet voice she told him, “I can take you back to your place.”

“I’m fine,” he said, even if he still felt awful. “I don’t—“

“Dad!”

Shae hurried across the room, nearly knocking over a couple people on their way. They crouched down in front of him and touched his cheeks, turning him to them. They were utterly shaken by the sight of him. He must’ve looked as bad as he felt.

“I’m not dying. It’s a panic attack,” he told Shae, then gestured at his stitched up lip. “And a fight.”

Juneeta stared at them for a moment in surprise, before offering her hand to Shae. “I’m Detective Kohli. You must be the daughter.”

Shae gave Sam a sidelong glance before quickly, halfheartedly shaking the cop’s hand and replying, “Sometimes.” Without giving their name in return, they looked to him and said, “Seriously, are you okay?”

His eyes passed over the small crowd watching him. He felt so damn uncomfortable. “Let’s go.”

Shae helped him up out of the chair, then draped his arm over their shoulders. The farther the two of them got from the mob, the easier it became for him to breathe. He spared a glance back at Juneeta, who was still kneeling next to the chair, solemnly watching him walk away.


	13. Unwelcome Developments

As Shae drove him home, Sam stared out the passenger side window, but he hardly noticed the details of the buildings they passed or the people shuffling along the dirty sidewalk. He was exhausted and defeated. The only good thing that could be said was that he hadn’t been killed. Not only had the fight proven too much for him, he’d had some sort of attack outside of combat. He’d been feeling a bit off the last couple weeks, but dismissed it as the accumulated effects of poor sleep and stress— Aila had suggested that he’d had a panic attack. Maybe stress wasn’t too far off.

His fingertips lightly traced the old claw mark along his face. He’d won that fight against the wraith, even with half his face in tatters. There’d been a time when he’d been one of the best hunters in the country, if not the world. He could’ve taken four amateurs without any trouble. That was half a century ago, before Shae was born.

He looked over at them. Sometimes he forgot that they were forty-six years old. Just like Kesi and Jack, Shae’s status as being part ethereal had slowed their aging a bit, just as Sam’s demon blood and subsequent serum had done for him. It was easy for him to see Shae just the same as when they’d been twenty. Time was passing, even if he’d been stubbornly ignoring it. Inevitably things would change; they already were.

“You sure I can’t take you to the hospital?” Shae asked him.

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I just want to go home.”

Jack and Kesi were waiting in the garage for them when they arrived. Dean even hovered anxiously on the lone wall-mounted display. The mayday command to Aila had notified all of them about the situation, even if none of them had been able to get to him before he’d been arrested. Everyone had probably been frantic waiting to hear if he was alright. The thought of them worrying over him somehow made him feel even worse.

Kesi hurried over to the passenger door, opened it for him, then offered him a hand. He wanted to refuse the help. Maybe he wasn’t in fantastic shape, but his injuries weren’t so bad. And yet, his knees and back hurt, largely for reasons not having to do with the fight. He could feel a headache coming on, and his spirits were shot. Despite his wounded pride, he took his niece’s hand, then allowed Shae to help him as he walked.

A little heat radiated off of the Impala when he passed it; one of them had just returned, possibly from springing into action at his distress call, as Shae had done. They slowly made their way to the closest meeting room. When he was settled in a chair, Jack gave him a glass of water and two aspirin. Everyone was hovering.

“What happened?” Shae asked as they took a seat next to him.

“I went to pick up the camera that had fallen and caught a tail,” he explained. “I couldn’t shake them. It ended up being four of them. They cornered me and we fought until the cops got there.”

Kesi paced a bit. “Were these the same people who attacked the police station?”

“I recognized a couple of them from our surveillance, so they’re associated with the building, but these weren’t the same exact people who hit the station. These guys weren’t particularly well trained.” Sam shook his head at the thought of pulling a gun in such a crowded place. It was a miracle that no one had been trampled to death. “They acted like grunts off the street instead of efficient killers.”

From the wall, Dean asked, “Do you need to go to the hospit—”

“For the last time, I’m fine,” Sam snapped. He pursed his lips, making his stitches sting a bit, and took a deep breath before explaining, “I think that’s like the fourth time someone has asked me that. It’s just some bruises and a hit to the lip. Nothing serious.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. It wasn’t like him to snap at anyone, let alone Dean. Normally he had nearly infinite patience for his brother. He just wanted to bury himself in bed and get that fucking day over with.

Shae cautiously said, “You looked messed up when I got to the station. When I was pushing through the crowd, somebody said something about a heart attack.”

“My heart’s fine; Aila checked it out,” he assured everyone. “I had a… reaction to something. Aila said it was like anxiety or some sensory input triggered me.”

“PTSD wouldn’t be unheard of for a hunter of your….” Kesi hesitated, then settled on wording. “Level of field experience.”

“You can say, ‘age,’” he told her. “You don’t have to be so diplomatic.”

“I was less worried about diplomacy and more worried about accuracy,” she replied. “Hunters of your age are usually dead, so any existing mental illness would be pretty atypical.”

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose, but he didn’t argue with the valid point.

“Sammy, you’ve been through a lot,” Dean agreed.

“That’s an understatement,” Jack commented. “You suffered more trauma by the time you were thirty-five than probably any other human— human-adjacent alive.”

Sam decided not to respond to being called “human-adjacent.” That was a pet peeve to deal with later. Instead, he argued, “I’ve been through a lot, but I’ve dealt with it. I deal with it. I don’t have panic attacks for no good reason.”

“Stresses can build up,” Kesi observed. “Maybe you’re starting to feel it more?”

“Maybe you need to decrease your field work,” Jack suggested.

Sam took a beat to keep himself composed. They were concerned for him and only trying to help. “I know that I wasn’t at my best against those guys, but I held my own for a while.”

“Dad.” Shae’s voice was incredibly gentle, almost pitying. “It’s not about the fight. You had an episode just walking through a room. I don’t want that happening during the next fight. Until we know you’re actually okay, you shouldn’t be running jobs.”

It wouldn’t be the first time that he’d been pulled from the field, but it wasn’t like last time. Previously, it had been caused by an injury, and while at the time it had appeared permanent, it hadn’t been. The current theory was that he had been felled by the gradual accumulation of trauma and stress throughout his life, which wasn’t likely to clear up on its own. Whether he liked it or not, it was the constant march of time that was forcing him out. He wasn’t likely to rebound from that one.

He nodded a bit, reluctantly acknowledging the suggestion, then quietly said, “That makes sense.”

* * *

Sam hardly got out of bed for the entire next day. Nobody questioned it. He couldn’t tell if they felt he needed that much time to physically recover from the fight or if they suspected that he was going through a period of introspection…. Well, he would’ve been if not for his fatigue and depression numbing his brain. Maybe they were right, that he was finally wearing out. The thought was disheartening, not because he was scared to be weak; he’d spent months bedridden, years working up to walking again, and nearly two decades immunosuppressed. All things being equal, he didn’t care what happened to him. He cared what his absence in the field would mean to the kids. 

It would be like when the kids were young again, with him unable to protect them out there. And this time Dean and Castiel wouldn’t be watching over them. Dean was in an intermittently pathetic state. He would soon be little more than that, a voice in Shae, Kesi, and Jack’s ear. Meanwhile, Castiel was….

“Cas,” Sam whispered in the darkness of his room. “If you can hear me, we really need you.”

He lay there unmoving for a long while, trying to summon the energy to get up, or even just change positions. His entire back felt like it must be bruised from when he’d been tackled to the floor in the club. No matter how he rearranged the little orthopedic pillows, there was always something that hurt. Over time the pain just left his body heavy and filled with a profound wrongness. It reminded him of when he was ill. 

He glanced over at the synthesizer on his nightstand and briefly wondered whether he might feel better if he took a second injection of serum for the day. The thought had barely formed before he pushed it aside. That was the kind of reasoning that led to dangerous territory. He was just about to roll onto his side, turning his back on the device, when his watch softly chimed.

“What is it, Aila?”

“You have a non-urgent message from Detective Kohli,” the AI informed him in a pleasant voice. “Would you like me to read it aloud or remind you once you have gotten up for the day?”

“Read it.”

“I’m worried about you. Talk to me.”

He waited a moment, then asked, “Is there more to the message?”

“No.”

He appreciated that she didn’t ask him if he was okay or if he’d been injured. It was a broad invitation to talk rather than a rehashing of the same questions and doubts. Honestly, he wasn’t sure what more he would’ve wanted from the message. He grabbed his watch, then selected the conversation and switched it to dictation mode.

“I’ve been better,” he replied.

After a minute or two Juneeta sent him the simple message, “I’m here if you need me.”

He considered her invitation to have a drink at her place. At the time he had dismissed it as being too much of a distraction. But just because he wasn’t fit for field work didn’t mean he suddenly had a ton of free time on his hands. As soon as he could drag himself out of bed he would have work to do, preparing mission briefs and running support. It’d be more of the same, only  _ more _ of it. He had no idea where a date might fit into his new reality.

“I appreciate that,” he told her, then hesitated, unsure what more to say. He canceled dictation mode, backing out of the conversation, then started getting out of bed.

Sam still felt like he’d been hit across the back with a metal folding chair, but he’d spent too long in bed. He needed a drink and to pull himself together. There was still a case: three missing werewolves, an advanced pleasure implant, and an assault team.

When he passed by the kitchen, he saw Jack sitting at the table, about halfway through a glass of synthehol.

“Looks like we had the same idea,” Sam said as he walked in to join him.

Jack poured a second glass and handed it off. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help.”

He took a sip, grimacing momentarily as the beverage made his stitched lip sting, but that wasn’t about to stop him. Afterwards, he’d have to go find some of that cauterizing liquid they used on Shae’s wounds. “It’s okay.”

“You got beat up.”

Sam had to take a moment to remind himself that Jack wasn’t used to these kinds of conversations. “I was minorly injured in a fight where I was outnumbered. I’ll admit that I wasn’t going to win that one, but I didn’t get my ass completely kicked.”

Jack thought about the correction for a couple seconds, then took another sip. “I know you’re upset about this, but I’m glad you’re gonna be here.” 

“Yeah.” He swirled the colorless, flavorless beverage as he muttered, “Nobody wants me falling down and breaking a hip.”

“It’s not just that,” Jack replied in a tone that made it clear he was trying to put a positive spin on the whole thing. “I like having you at the base, telling me what to do when things are tough.”

The sentiment struck Sam as rather sad. He’d known for a long time that Jack appreciated his help and advice, but there was something in the lightness of how the statement was delivered that felt off. There was relief in his voice.

Sam cautiously said, “I won’t be around forever. You know that, right?”

“You said yourself that it was a panic attack. There’s no reason to think that you’d die if you stay here where it’s safe,” Jack assured him. “With your serum treatment, your aging is so slow that you can—“

“Jack—“

“But you have a soul,” he continued, unfazed by whatever exasperated expression was on Sam’s face. “You don’t have to disappear like Cas. If something happens, you can always do like Dean.”

Sam felt like he’d been sucker punched. There was a sudden desperation in Jack that he hadn’t noticed before, as he tried to hold onto his last mentor and parent. He put down his drink and pulled Jack into a hug, unsure if the nephilim understood any of the emotions that Sam was feeling.

“I love Dean,” Sam whispered through a knot of emotion in his throat. “I understand why he did what he did, but I don’t want to end up like him. I’m telling you that I’m going to die someday, and I’m trying to get you kids ready for it. That’s my mission; that’s always been my mission.” He leaned back to look Jack in the eyes. “Do you feel like you’re learning?”

Jack considered the question for several seconds, sincerely reflecting on his own growth. “I think so. I have ideas, but I’d rather you just tell me what’s right.”

Sam buried his face in his hands. This was wrong. The whole thing was wrong. 

Someday he would die and he wanted to believe that the kids would be alright without him. But Jack was using him as a crutch, relying on him for the morally correct choice or step-by-step instructions on how to lose a tail. The guy had been hunting for sixty years, and yet he was hesitant to make his own decisions. Sam just didn’t understand where things had gone so far off course.

Before he could process the new development enough to respond, Kesi poked her head into the kitchen and told them, “I’ve got the rest of the chip diagnostics.”

Jack got up and followed her out, oblivious to the can of worms that had just been discovered. There was a break in the case, and apparently the nephilim’s personal development would have to take a backseat that much longer. Sam nearly took the rest of his glass of synthehol with him as he walked to the briefing room, though he thought better of it. The circumstances admittedly called for the drowning of sorrows, but wandering around the base with a hard beverage in hand was more of a Dean move. Instead, he took one last swig and abandoned the remainder on the kitchen table.

When everyone was assembled in the briefing room, Kesi began her explanation. But instead of starting with a recap or synopsis, she hugged her shawl closer to herself while pulling up a section of code on the screen. The lengthy portion scrolled past as she explained, “This is the substitute for the governor.”

It was hard to imagine what could possibly take the place of a clearly defined limit. The very concept of an end or finality was largely inflexible. But the way she was teeing up the explanation and her withdrawn posture—she was leading to something that alarmed her.

“What is it?” asked Shae.

“Who,” she corrected. “It’s an AI. Not a very complicated one, but it’s a reacting-on-the-fly, motivated entity. As far as I can tell, it’s not metering out euphoria for a fee, it’s deploying it based on more dynamic criteria. And it’s talking to the users.”

Sam was suddenly grateful that he hadn’t drunk anymore than he already had. “It’s talking to them?”

“It does super short range broadcasts to a second implant that rests on an auditory nerve. We only got half of the hardware.”

That shouldn’t have come as such a surprise to them. It had been wishful thinking to assume that the lead that had fallen into their laps would’ve been the entirety of the pieces to the puzzle. And the fact that that implant interfaced with a second component while operating an AI did fall more in line with the sophisticated technology that Nima had identified it as. 

“So the AI issues instructions, then triggers pleasure after registering specific behavior by the user?” Sam asked.

“Yeah.” Kesi's face was dim. “And it can cause pain, adrenaline highs, fear— pretty much you name it.”

Shae furrowed their brow at the idea. “How do a couple of chips have so much control?”

“We’re all chemistry and electricity, and maybe the ethereals have a flicker of magic,” Kesi replied. “The main chip is regulating a bunch of hormones.”

“And that’s as good as any drug or poison,” Sam agreed. He was intimately familiar with the impact that chemicals could have on one’s daily life. “It’s training them, maybe even shaping them into barely more than rubbugs.”

“So why are the users dead?” asked Shae. “Why work to ingrain this in people just to kill them?”

Kesi skimmed through the code, looking for a particular section as she replied, “Because whoever was customizing this AI didn’t know what they were doing.” She stopped scrolling and zoomed in on a single line, then walked up and pointed to a specific period on the large display. “They put this decimal point in the wrong spot. It’s a common mistake for novices, not knowing how to write a percent as a decimal.”

Sam stared at the line in such shock that his mouth actually fell open a bit. He wasn’t nearly as good at coding as his niece, but he could see it. The factory settings included an AI that was perfectly willing to, albeit infrequently, hit users with a hundred times the intended punch under certain circumstances. That’s how it had downed a werewolf, and why whoever was covering this mess up had used an antagonist agent to eradicate the hormonal evidence in the blood.

After a long stunned silence, Shae asked, “It’s an AI. It can learn that it’s wrong, right?”

“It  _ should _ learn,” Kesi agreed. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Well, this sort of mistake isn’t going to be something the normal debugging software catches because it’s not technically a bug. It’s executing correctly on a typo.” She shrugged apologetically. “And the AI will only try to diagnose the problem if someone informs it that killing users is bad and that it should locate the error. And that could still be hard if the AI doesn’t know what normal dosage ranges are or if the chip doesn’t contact the server frequently enough to transfer a log leading up to the lethal dose— There’s a lot that could go wrong.”

A lot had if three bodies had ended up in the morgue. At least the bad guys were having a miserable time of it as well, though that was cold comfort.

“Someone is making minions,” Sam said, taking them back to the big picture. “That’s how a werewolf kid with no money gets an advanced pleasure implant; he just gets tricked into becoming a lab experiment and slave.”

“How many of them are there?” asked Dean.

“At least three more werewolves,” replied Shae. “Plus probably some of the people at that building.”

“The goons that attacked me could’ve been users,” Sam speculated. “They didn’t seem highly combat trained. I don’t look like much of a threat, so why bother sending the big guns after me.”

“And the assault team at the police station?” Jack asked. “They had combat training.”

Sam absentmindedly chewed his lip, but stopped at the pain from his stitches. “Did they? June— Detective Kohli told me that they just didn’t go down from normal bullets. Give some werewolves body armor and an implant-regulated combat high, they could be scary as hell.”

“Well, somebody that’s halfway menacing is behind this,” Shae said. “So, who is it? And how are we supposed to stop them?”

There was a silence as they all processed the daunting task ahead of them, then Sam stood up. “I don’t know about you, but I need some more aspirin and an entire pot of sea brew.”

* * *

Even with the new intel, some things took precedent, primarily their own safety.

Sam skimmed through the list of security alerts for the building they were in and the immediate area. He and Kesi took turns writing different scripts that would create a red flag if triggered. That week’s list only contained two emergency services dispatches (for a kitchen fire and animal control trying to locate an escaped python), and five instances of pedestrian loitering. The loiterers were all marked as being a low threat level. None of them had a criminal record, and after reviewing the video logs it was clear to Sam that they were waiting for other residents to meet them outside before departing.

There wasn’t any indication that he had been followed home after the fight and brief stint in police custody. He’d been released so quickly and before his pursuers that any back up they might’ve called in had evidently arrived too late to give chase. He still added an extra set of passcodes to all external doors and admin access to their main systems, then turned his attention to some research.

He tried to pull up the purchasing records for the building that they were staking out. Unfortunately, those sorts of transactions were no longer a piece of public record, or at least he couldn’t find that information from something as simple as looking up the address. That wouldn’t be the easy route to finding an owner or tenant’s name. Instead, he started coming at it from every other angle he could think of that might be found online. Things like utility bills and building permits were all in the name of some anonymous corporation that could’ve been any individual or group. That level of insulation made the work tedious, but he kept at it for nearly six hours straight, trying to find any breach in the bureaucratic armor.

After that lengthy research session, Sam was sitting at his desk, feeling incredibly restless. Normally, being indoors for days at a time didn’t bother him, but faced with the prospect of spending the rest of his professional life helpless behind a desk, it shook him. He got up and decided to go for a walk— Not far. Nowhere near the stakeout or anything to do with the case. He just needed to not feel so trapped.

He put on his coat and was about to leave when he stopped. Even if there wasn’t a clear imminent threat, things were different than before. He grabbed his pistol loaded it with silver bullets, then slipped it into the concealed holster in his jacket before stepping out into the night. They didn’t live in the nicest neighborhood, but it was familiar and he felt as capable there as anywhere else in the world. He knew every alleyway and side street.

Crimson spray paint marred a wall in a hastily drawn mural. Large, crude tentacles reached up from the ground to surround text exclaiming, “Take back the night!”

Sam’s eyes narrowed at the graffiti. It made him feel particularly uneasy for some reason, but he kept walking rather than dignify the depiction of the Great Old Gods with a response. His footsteps echoed through the corridor of steel and concrete. Tiny claws scratched and scurried in the rubble that had simply been pushed aside into the corners that hadn’t seen sunlight in decades.

A melancholy tune drifted through the air, echoing in a ghostly sort of way down the narrow alley. It had to be a recording. No one owned something as antiquated as a piano in this age. Knowing how to play such a lilting song seemed even less likely. Recording or not, it felt right for such a gloomy setting.

“Sam.”

He stopped, closing his eyes for a second at that old familiar voice, then turned around. 

Nima was standing in the shadows of a recessed doorway. The diffused moonlight barely lit her face, but he recognized her instantly. Her matte black trench coat merged seamlessly with the darkness of the night. Surely she had been the muse of some great artist long ago, inspiring the entire archetype of the vampire seductress.

But she wasn’t just a stunning exterior or a vicious killer to him. Things between them were too complicated for such superficial takeaways. In that moment, he didn’t attempt to ignore or avoid her, nor did he deny the existence of whatever feelings had made her seek him out. Maybe their time together wasn’t the profound experience it had been for her, but he didn’t dismiss it. Not only had he saved her life, with his help she had risen to become arguably one of the most powerful people in the city. More than that, they’d been lovers. To him, it’d been a five-week, intoxicated fling, but to her it’d been completely different.

Vampires mated for life. She’d bound herself to him, then he’d essentially left her— one of the most dangerous people around. Granted, at the time he’d been taken from her against his will by Dean and Castiel, then left home bound for years. But he’d never returned to her, knowing perfectly well that she wouldn’t ever be able to move on. The only thing saving him from some violent expression of her hurt feelings was that she might’ve genuinely cared for him. Every time he thought about that it pained him. It was one of his many regrets.

“Tired of sending Clint to say hello?” he asked.

She stepped out of the doorway and approached him. “I wanted to know if you were watching.” When Nima was right in front of him, she reached up and touched his cheek. Her cold fingers lightly caressed the bruises and cut on his face. “Who did this?”

He didn’t want her to get involved. “It was just a case. It’s not important.”

“How many did you kill?”

In a weird way her question made him feel better. There was at least one person who didn’t think he was made of glass.

“Enough to annoy the police,” he replied.

She smiled, delighted by the thought, probably imagining the violence. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that it had been an incidental death, not a brutally efficient massacre like when they were together.

He hadn’t been planning on seeing her again, but as long as they were speaking, there was one thing he needed to tell her.

“Nima, I don’t want Shae getting mixed up with vampires.” His voice was candid concern. There wasn’t any point hiding it from her; she could hear his heartbeat and knew his tells. “Maybe your nest wouldn’t hurt them, but there are others out there that you don’t control. I’ve been trying to keep Shae out of all the demon drama. I don’t want Shae thinking that it’s safe for them to be around vampires.”

She studied him for a beat, considering the request. Thankfully, she was so protective of her nest that there wasn’t any doubt in Sam’s mind that she could appreciate his concerns as a parent. After a moment, she conceded, “Fine. I won’t stalk them in a dark alley. I promise.” Her gaze briefly drifted down to his lips, across his body, then back to his eyes. “You try so hard to protect your child, but is this really the best way to do it? You could be powerful again. You changed the very fiber of the city once before. I could help you—“

“Nima….” He wouldn’t allow himself to turn into that monstrous force again.

Her jaw clenched slightly at his implicit rejection. She nodded, while processing his words, but recovered fairly quickly. Her fingertips reached up to trace the crows feet by his left eye, then twirled some of his silver hair. “Well, when you’re ready to end this slow death, I’m here for you. There will always be a place for you with me. Always.”

When they had been together, she had never tried to turn him into a vampire. Granted he’d been younger and in much better shape back then. It was an offer, not a threat. The thing she wanted most was something she couldn’t take. She wanted him, not as a prisoner, but as a real partner again.

“You want me to be something I’m not,” he told her.

The corner of her mouth curled up subtly as she gave him a pitying smile. “I’ve been around a long time. I’ll continue to be around even longer. I have patience.” She slid her hand between the buttons of his shirt. Her fingertips seemed to trace from memory the exact location of the tattoo depicting him as a demigod. “Time will tell. There’s no escaping it for either of us.”

Nima looked up into his eyes with candid longing. For a moment, he thought she might pull him into a kiss—either for old time’s sake or maybe from forty-six years of distilled pining. He wouldn’t have stopped her. Things between them were unreciprocated and painfully complex, but they both knew it. And as much as he didn’t want her becoming involved with his family and life, he didn’t want to hurt her any more than he already had. But in the end, she simply turned from him.

Sam watched her walk towards a narrow, adjacent alley twenty feet away that somehow seemed entirely void of light. She stopped just short of the threshold, then turned her head, as if she might make one last invitation or threat. Instead, after a beat, she stepped into the absolute darkness. Even the sound of her footsteps seemed to disappear into the night.


	14. Recognition

Sam studied the misty nimbuses of the streetlights as he strolled home. Seeing Nima again had been unexpected and in many ways unwelcome. He didn’t like the idea of her dropping in on him, possibly with the goal of entering his life again. For many years, he’d strived to put all of that behind him.

And yet, merely being in her presence, in the darkness of the night, the city didn’t seem so scary. Rationally, he might dismiss that feeling as knowing that his company had been a capable fighter who was viciously protective of him. But the other piece of the picture was that the last time they’d been together, the night had been their time to hunt. When Nima wasn’t handling nest business, they would walk the streets together, stalking prey. He hadn’t feared anything back then because they were the biggest bads in the city.

Now, he had barely recovered from a beating by a few randoms and a panic attack without a known trigger… and yet, walking in his black wool coat, a lone figure, silhouetted against the fog—he felt a little more at home. There had been a time when the worst choice a person could ever make was to mess with him. He wasn’t so menacing now, but there had been a time, even if that time had also been one of the greatest regrets of his life.

Even only graced by a small smattering of pedestrians, the streets were teeming with energy. There was a gentle hum of traffic and drones flying through the canopy of lowly clouds. Behind the mammoth towers of glass and metal, countless people slept or went about their business.

As his gaze drifted across the buildings, he briefly caught a reflection in the walls of solid window. Massive, tan tentacles reached out from the cloud cover, eager to envelop a nearby tower. The mist surrounding the creature started turning green, painting the sky in a sickly hue. His eyes reflexively glanced at the cloud, where the tentacles should have been emerging, but there was nothing there.

Sam knew that he’d been having nightmares, and maybe he’d become distracted at traumatic memories, but this was something different. He was hallucinating. Maybe there really was something wrong with him. He looked down at the ground for a moment and rubbed his face.

“Aila,” he quietly told his watch. “I want to decrease my serum dosage for the next week.”

“You are currently taking a moderate dosage after your recent drawback,” she replied. “Is something wrong? Your pulse is elevated. Would you like me to contact medical services?”

“No. I’m fine.” He glanced around to see if any of the other people around might be within earshot. “Log a symptom. I had a visual hallucination for a moment.”

“A hallucination would be anomalous at your current dosage, roughly .28% probability. Please consider alternative explanations before verifying.” He knew that it was a nonjudgmental safety feature, but still didn’t appreciate the doubtful tone and implications. “Would you still like to log it?

“Yes.”

“Would you like to add a description to the entry?”

After a slight hesitation, he said, “Yes. Add the following: tentacles in the clouds, seen in a reflection.”

Aila waited several seconds before checking. “Is that the end of your description?”

“Yes.”

“There appears to be similarities between your hallucination and twenty-eight entries in your dream journal,” Aila noted aloud.

Sam furrowed his brow; he’d forgotten about his old journal. During the first six months of his illness, he’d been plagued by nightmares and depressive fits. When medicine and magic had done little to improve his situation, he’d turned to cognitive behavioral therapy. Among the things he’d tried was keeping journals in order to get the thoughts out of his head.

He hurried back to the base and went straight to his bedroom. His first instinct had been to pull up the records on the computer in his office, though he quickly decided against it. He didn’t want to risk someone walking in on him while he was listening to the recordings. It was true that he could play them through his earpiece and thus avoid eavesdropping, but he barely remembered what had actually gone into those journal entries. The last week had been such a blur of stress and confusion, he didn’t know how he might react to the sound of his own voice back during a difficult time. 

After closing the door and taking a seat on his bed, he instructed, “Aila, begin playback on those journal entries, starting with the earliest.”

His younger self sounded exhausted, pausing to take an audible breath periodically as he spoke. “I don’t understand it. I had another dream about the creatures again. I think they might be the Lovecraftian tentacle monsters that Maliheh had mentioned.” Sam had forgotten the name of the nest’s resident religious fanatic; he’d avoided her whenever he was sober enough to find her annoying. “I don’t think I had them at the nest…. I don’t know if I slept. Did I have the dreams before? That feels like years ago.” He let out a long sigh that turned into a coughing fit. “God, I’m tired. I wish I could…. I wish… the dreams would stop.”

After a moment, there was a soft chime to indicate the end of that entry and the beginning of the next. He listened to nearly two dozen entries that painted a similar picture: His nightmares had been a mixture of violent images and memories, occasionally with the odd addition of brown or black tentacles slithering around the edges before creeping out from ruins or the shadows. That theme didn’t make much sense to him, but the last few entries were a bit different.

“There were bodies, maybe twenty or thirty of them. I think they were real people; it might’ve been a memory. They weren’t buried in rubble, but the asphalt was torn up. I don’t remember where it was, but it was familiar. We had blood on our hands. Nima licked it off my wrist…. That would’ve been human blood.” There was a pause, but no chime came; there was more to it. Sam anxiously ran his fingertips over his dry lips as he waited for the recording to continue. “She tore open my shirt and touched the tattoo. Part of the design had tentacles. I hadn’t noticed it before, but after waking up I checked. It was right where it had been in the dream. 

“I’m… I’m scared to tell Dean and Cas. I’m scared there’s something wrong with—that there’s even more wrong with me. They’re fighting. I know it, even if they won’t tell me. Everything’s gone wrong and they’re suffering for it, and I don’t-I don’t know how to tell them that there’s something else for them to worry about. I just…. I don’t know.”

Sam’s heart ached at that all too familiar fear. His family had gone through so much, back then and since. He didn’t want to worry them then; he didn’t want it now either. At least the kids weren’t fighting with each other over how best to take care of him. No one had to shoulder the guilt over his uncertain state this time around. There wasn’t culpability, only helplessness.

Another chime.

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to get better. Every time I fall asleep the nightmares come. I hate it. Everything is blood and death and tentacles and black smoke. I wake up weak and I can’t stay awake. I’m just thrown back into that mess. I feel like I’m gonna die in this—“ 

The sound of a baby crying in the distance interrupted him. There was rustling for a few seconds, then the clatter of a few things falling, including one loud thud. He hissed in pain and cursed. After a little while, hurried footsteps came closer.

“Jesus, Sam!” Dean exclaimed as he got right up near the unnoticed, live mic. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m okay.” His voice was quieter than before.

“Bullshit. Let me check your wrist. What happened?”

“I heard the baby. I just thought—“

“You aren’t in any shape to go near it. You know what Cas said; you’re too sick. Normal kids are walking plagues, and that one’s all the mojo that the spell thought was bad enough to take away from you. You aren’t touching it until you’re stronger.” 

“I want to help.” He sounded so tired and defeated.

“Help by getting better. In the meantime, Jack’s dealing with him,” Dean assured his brother. “I’ll get Cas to clean you up, then I can redo the IV and he can take care of the hose.”

“I don’t need a cath,” Sam said, caught between defiance and exhaustion.

“You’re still passing out. The last thing we need is for you to be lying unconscious in your own piss for a few hours. It’s bad enough dealing with the demon’s diapers—“

“D-don’t call it a demon.” His voice broke; he was finally crying. “Please. I can’t take anymore. I can’t take any more demons—what I did, these nightmares. All I dream about are the corpses and the screaming and in my dreams half the time I don’t even care. I just want a taste.”

“You’re clean, Sammy,” Dean told him. “We got all of it out of you.”

“I still remember it,” he whispered. “I don’t want to feel it anymore. I want it to be over. I don’t want that baby to be one of them. Don’t even say the word demon to….” 

His voice trailed off, then Dean sighed. There were shuffling sounds, followed by footsteps leading away. In the distance, Dean’s receding voice said, “Cas, we need you. Sam rolled out of bed. He’s a mess….”

Sitting alone in his bedroom, listening to those journal entries, Sam started sobbing. In a very real way, he’d forgotten what it had been like back then. The details and emotions had dulled with time and distance. For the first time in decades, hearing the way they’d actually spoken, remembering the pain and shame… was disorienting. The recording had been from before Dean had warmed up to Shae. Hell, they might not have even named them yet. 

Meanwhile, he’d been struggling with his new physical disability, his past deeds, and the lingering effects of his addiction. Little did the men in the recording know that those issues would haunt him to some degree for the rest of his life.

Dean had told him to, “Help by getting better.” What a cruel piece of encouragement that had turned out to be. He hadn’t been able to will himself to heal. The tedious process may have even been slowed by the additional pressure to recover enough to not be a burden. In hindsight, the mistakes and shortsightedness was clear; it always was.

Another chime shook him from his introspection.

“I’m worried about my dreams,” the next journal entry began, heedless to Sam’s tears. “Everyone says it’s trauma, and I’m sure that’s part of it, but I feel off. I’m seeing things I’ve never seen before. Those fucking tentacle monsters, I dreamt about them reaching down through the sky and wrapping around a building. I’ve never seen that. How is that supposed to be trauma?

“I called Rowena. She said she’d visit when she could, but that her hands were full. Something’s wrong with magic; something has become unbalanced. I know I didn’t help anything by killing the—” He hesitated very briefly before uttering the unwelcome word. “—demons around here. Cas said I scared them, but that wouldn’t explain why Rowena’s busy in New Zealand. Not that I can do anything from this fucking bed, even if we knew what was happening out there.

“As for me, I was thinking….” He paused again, then said in a quieter voice, “What if Dean and Cas didn’t get everything out of me? Looking at the tattoo again, I have to wonder: What if Nima was right? What if I’m supposed to kill the Great Old Ones and that’s why I can’t stop seeing them?  _ Fuck _ ,” he groaned. “I’m going insane— Well, I guess that’s apt.”

The entry ended, then flowed into the next with a chime.

“They’re just bad dreams. Cas and Rowena checked me out every way imaginable. I’m just human now. There’s nothing special about me, aside from these damn tattoos. Rowena suggested that they’re magical and maybe because of that, part of the story occasionally slips into my brain, but it’s not me doing it and it doesn’t mean anything. I might see tentacle monsters from time to time.” He sighed. “I guess it’s better than hallucinating Lucifer. It’s nothing. I’ll be okay.”

After the first few years, the tentacle imagery had slowed down and stopped. He’d assumed that it was over, that the dwindling magic in the area had finally quieted the cursed thing.

Sam took off his shirt and touched the black linework across his chest. It shouldn’t have woken up. There wasn’t any reason for it. The more likely explanation was that it was all part of his mental-emotional break. If he was already prone to panic attacks, what was to say that the constant barrage of that cultist crap hadn’t brought back the memories of his old nightmares. He’d spotted some One Old-worshipping graffiti shortly before seeing Nima. There was a reasonable explanation. He lay back and buried himself in the bedding.

* * *

Far away in the darkness, a man said, “Sir, we found this on the eastern side. It appears to still be broadcasting.”

“Good,” replied another voice. “Are we ready to start the excitement?”

“Almost,” answered a woman. “We just need a little more juice before we light it up.”

The black emptiness flashed in a burst of green light that gradually faded to form the cloud-covered skyline. Shae was standing on the balcony of Nima’s flat, sipping a glass of blood while watching the city slowly burn.

Sam woke up, groaned, then rolled onto his stomach and pressed his face into his pillow. It took him several minutes of lying in the dark before he reached over to grab his watch. There was only twenty minutes before his morning alarm, so he reluctantly decided to get up. Before he could grab a syringe for the serum, there was a knock at his bedroom door.

“Sam,” Kesi said. “We’ve got a… well, yeah, this probably qualifies as a problem.”

He looked between the synthesizer and the door. “Do I have time to take my serum?”

“Yeah, but skip the shower.”

It only took him ten minutes to take his medicine and get dressed. Unpleasant scenarios circulated in his mind as he hobbled through the hallways a bit faster than usual. He liked to think that his niece would’ve been a bit more alarmed if the situation was a matter of life-or-death. In actuality, it turned out to be something of a mixed blessing. One of their surveillance cameras had been taken.

Kesi scrolled back the feed for the camera to an hour earlier. A hooded figure climbed up on a small step ladder and dislodged the hardware. The video went black as it was stuffed into an otherwise empty coat pocket. For ten minutes the only intel they were getting was the clumsy sounds of the camera’s microphone rubbing against the heavy fabric.

When the camera was eventually withdrawn, it was pointed at the silhouette of a man sitting at a table. The background was featureless except for two wall sconces of red glass, casting the smooth white wall in a pink hue.

The man told the camera, “I want to talk to Sam,” then set the camera to standby mode so that nothing would accidentally be broadcast out while he waited.

Kesi returned it to the live feed of the screensaver. “That was twenty-five minutes ago.”

He looked up at her. “Can they trace the feed back to us?”

“I don’t think so,” she replied. “The link is being redirected through a handful of proxies, including two that are maintained by the hunter network’s tech heads. It’d take experts to crack through that, and the coding slip up on the implant doesn’t look like the work of experts.”

“Are we assuming all our other equipment is compromised?” asked Shae from the back wall, where they were watching with Jack.

“That would be the safe bet,” Sam agreed, then raised his hand to indicate that he wanted silence before he turned on his mic.

“This is Sam,” he broadcast back to the stranger. “What do I call you?”

“ _ You _ can call me Sir.”

He was grateful that there was no video coming from his end, otherwise the man might’ve been offended by him rolling his eyes. It was going to be one of  _ those _ villains. As tempting as it was to call the guy out for being a bit ridiculous with that condescending remark, he decided not to risk insulting him. One of the few things they did know about Sir was that he had pawns, hostages, and no qualms about killing people.

“What did you want to talk about, Sir?”

“I want to talk about you,” the man replied. “I see bounty hunters as very reasonable people. When I see you, I see a miserable human being. Someone who’s barely holding it together because you have to. You’re chasing a pathetic $15,000 bounty on a case no one gives a damn about, and it nearly got you killed. It nearly got you arrested for murder.” Sir waited a beat to allow the direness of the situation to sink in, then he continued in a lighter tone. “I’m gonna give you an out. $50,000 for everything you’ve collected in your investigation, and an extra $20,000 if I’m impressed by your work. You can walk away.”

Well, that corroborated the theory that top men hadn’t been thrown at him. The bad guy had misjudged him, assuming that he was just one of the opportunistic bounty hunter crowd— and an old, desperate one at that. And yet, that only made sense up to the point where he had defended himself against steep odds. It was naive to think that this man was entirely dismissing him as a threat. He was fishing for a witness, trying to coax him out of hiding.

Sam unmuted the channel back, then said, “I killed one of your men.”

“The cost of doing business isn’t always cash.”

After a moment, he replied, “I need to think about it.”

“Don’t take too long. I might not be so generous if you keep me waiting.” 

The feed returned to stand-by mode. Sam scooted his chair back from the desk and turned around to look at the others. Their uncertain expressions matched his feelings on the whole thing. There was an open channel; whether there was any value in that remained to be seen.

“Are you going to meet with him?” asked Jack.

Sam shook his head, “He’ll kill me if I go.”

“Can we make this into a trap?” Shae mused.

“We don’t know how many there are or what he looks like,” Sam sighed. “It’d be too easy for them to outmaneuver us.”

“At least you annoyed him,” Dean commented from the computer speaker.

“All things being equal, I’d prefer that he still didn’t know my name.”

* * *

“Dad.” He turned away from his computer to see Shae standing in the doorway of his office. She was wearing her crescent moon necklace and one of her comfy rompers. “Can you take a break? I made dinner.”

Sam glanced at the clock; he hadn’t realized that he’d been working for the last seven hours straight. It was almost nine o’clock. “Yeah, sure.”

She waited for him to get up and walked with him through the cold hallways. He wasn’t sure if she was worried about his immediate health or if the scare with the panic attack had reminded her about his mortality—what a contrast that would have been to Jack’s takeaway. As much as he wanted to reassure her that he was fine, he didn’t want to accidentally place the seed of doubt if she was just feeling sociable. Anyway, denying existing illness or injury was such a tradition in their family that as far as he was concerned, the phrase “show, don’t tell,” was a principle to live by.

A small smile spread across his face when he saw that she’d made a dish he was particularly fond of: whitefish and rice soup. When she was little, he’d often heat up cans of chicken and rice soup for her when there wasn’t anyone else around to do a better job at cooking. By the time she had taken over as the chef between the two of them, chicken had become a more expensive protein than fish or generic umami bites, so she’d improvised her own version of the childhood classic. 

He silently watched her eat. The cuts and bruising from the fight with the werewolves were nearly gone. She didn’t ever complain about injuries. Part of that might’ve been her Winchester stubbornness, but it was possible that she was just built tougher than him, Dean, and Kesi. She was a different composition.

The pleas of his younger self, wanting to never hear the word demon again, struck him. He loved Shae, and despite that, demons were just such a painful subject that they still almost never mentioned both the species and her being part of it. One instance of the unacknowledged demonness was in the very meal they were eating. Aside from the change in protein, Shae had also substituted soy sauce and vinegar for the salt. He’d grown used to those accommodations decades ago, such a minor detail that nobody even noted it anymore. It was a nonissue.

After having about half of the meal, she asked him, “How’re you feeling?”

“Better.” 

He didn’t have it in him to try convincing anyone that he’d been alright even after the fight and attack. Honestly, as much as he thought the entire situation had been overblown, he was starting to concede the point that he hadn’t bounced back as quickly as he used to. He’d spent a while in bed afterwards because of his discouragement, but truth be told, the fight had left him sore, and the hallucination of the tentacles indicated some lingering emotional or mental distress.

“I don’t know if it’s stress or trauma,” he continued. “But maybe there is something off.”

Shae rested her hand on his wrist. “You know, even if you’re gonna be taking it slower, you’re still my hero.”

Sam was filled with a swell of gratitude lightly tarnished by his own self-doubt. He didn’t know what he’d done to inspire those feelings in her, but he appreciated her kind words, so much so that his throat grew tight with emotion. He took her hand and briefly squeezed it.

Sensing the emotional heaviness of the moment, Shae loudly slurped her broth a bit, then asked, “So, are you and that cop fucking?”

Sam nearly choked on the spoonful of soup he was swallowing. He covered his face with his hand in an attempt to hide any blushing. “Oh, god.”

“Because I’m not ready to have a mom.” 

She was teasing him; thank god for that.

“We’re friends,” he replied automatically before deciding that it might be worth laying a little foundation, should anything develop. “And maybe after the attack, things got a bit… more complicated. But we aren’t dating.”

Shae shrugged. “Says the guy who doesn’t like my policy on one-night stands.”

At first he smiled at her point, but the more he thought about it, the more unsettling questions were raised. If she had grown up taking her cues from him, Dean, and Castiel, then no wonder she had never pursued a real romantic relationship. Her being intersex wouldn’t be a problem with the right partner. And being part demon could be ignored since it wasn’t relevant in their lives. But supposedly, he was a hero to her and he’d never been on a single date during her lifetime. Dean had only had casual encounters, even producing Kesi through such a fleeting moment. Sometimes he forgot that, even in minor ways, throughout her life he’d been teaching by being an example.

“You know, you’re allowed to be happy,” he told her.

“Hold on. I think there’s an echo on the feed,” she replied with a smirk.

“I know I’m a hypocrite, but it’s true.”

Her smile faded a bit. “There’s so much to do. Maybe you and Dean were able to make it work back in the day, but the rest of us— I can barely handle my job. That plus the other stuff, I don’t think so.”

“I wasn’t ready to have a personal life when you were born. It just happened and we made it work.” He shook his head. “I’m not saying that you need to go get married and have a family, just that… you shouldn’t be scared to have connections.”

He felt a bit odd suggesting that she might be scared of something. His intention had been to speak from his own experience. He’d be a fool to not recognize the many ways that fear had been slowly creeping into his life over the years. Maybe, until very recently, he hadn’t considered the impact it was having on his relationships— or lack thereof. But articulating his own personal failing like that, and seeing its shadow cast on Shae, it was a bit unnerving.

For Shae’s entire adult life, he’d considered her fairly well put together. She had a cockiness to her, but it was that mostly charming sort that Dean had exhibited in his prime. He always assumed that that trait had been adopted by her after spending so much time while learning to hunt with her uncle. And yet, framing her slightly antisocial behavior as a fear response felt oddly on point.

“Maybe when things get simpler,” Shae replied.

It was the sort of thing that he’d heard or said countless times over the years. The future was always made a scapegoat with promises of some quieter time when the wholesome bits and self-care could occur. The sentiment made his heart hurt a bit, but he didn’t dare risk their pleasant dinner, one bright spot in a long rough patch, by forcing the issue. Instead he gave her a weak smile and continued enjoying his soup. 


	15. Escalation

Sam stretched a bit in the privacy of his room, attempting to see if all the aches from the fight were gone. As far as he could tell, the dull pains he felt were all routine and nothing to worry over. When he was done, he started stripping down to his underwear in preparation for going to sleep. He ran his hands along his chest and upper arms, testing to see if he was losing much muscle definition. With him not going out as much and after getting beat up, it was probably a good idea for him to start exercising at their small in-base gym. He wouldn’t be surprised if the others saw it as wasted effort, but he didn’t want to sit by and do nothing while he lost whatever physical fitness remained.

He decided to experimentally try a few sit-ups. It was a good core exercise and he needed all the help he could get with his lower back pain. Looking down his torso, his eyes kept lingering on the tattoo of the Crujah. Hearing the journal entries talking about its unpleasant history, having the tentacle hallucination, having Nima’s cold fingers gently caress it— The damn thing was bringing up far more uncomfortable feelings than usual. Even on his best days, he was embarrassed by it…. Well, it hadn’t been as bothersome lying naked with Juneeta. She’d been a bit amused by the extensiveness, but once that was out of the way it was just a big, dumb tattoo. Maybe that was one of the perks of being with someone who wasn’t up to their neck in the supernatural: perspective.

He grabbed his comm and sat down on his bed, then called the burner phone he’d given her. After a few seconds she picked up.

“Thanks for calling,” she told him in lieu of a hello.

“Thanks for answering,” he said, echoing her sentiment from when he picked her up after the attack on the police station. After letting out a sigh, he summoned a little courage. “I’m sorry about stonewalling you on the case. It’s just complicated and we’re playing this close for now— It’s not you or—or  _ us— _ ”

“Us?” She sounded particularly amused, as if she could sense him squirming.

“Friends with benefits or whatever we are,” he explained bashfully as he dragged his fingers along the bed’s fitted sheet, sensing the texture.

“You really haven’t been in a relationship since your daughter was a baby,” Juneeta said.

“It’s not a life that meshes well with a healthy personal life. I used to live out of my brother’s car when I was in my twenties and it’s only gotten incrementally closer to normal from there.”

“I can’t believe you’d ever think I’d find you boring.” Her comment made him blush a bit in the dim light of his bedroom. Her tone turned subtly serious as she asked, “Seriously, how’re you doing?”

“Well, I’m not dead yet,” he answered before giving a real answer. “My kids don’t think I’m fit for the field anymore.”

“I’m all too familiar with that,” she replied, then added, “Well, now I want to have you over for that drink for more reasons than just getting in your pants again.”

His lips curled into a grin at the joke.

“It’s safer if we don’t meet up for a bit,” he told her. “Someone who might want to kill me doesn’t have good leads, but if I go see you after everything, they might start looking at you.”

“You’re not very good at instilling a lot of confidence.”

Sam groaned before muttering, “Apparently that’s one of my defining characteristics.”

“What’s wrong?”

He hesitated a moment, then asked, “Do you get along well with your kids?”

“I mean, we’ve had our disagreements over the years, but overall, yeah.” In a slightly hesitant voice she said, “Family troubles?”

“Maybe. I was talking to one of….” He paused a beat, trying to convey his relationship with Jack. “There’s this guy. I knew his mom; the dad was the worst. When she died, my brother and I took him in.”

“Ah, so you’ve got a son too.”

“I guess. He’s the oldest, but he has some….” Sam considered the nephilim’s lack of a soul. “The kid is neurologically atypical, so it’s a bit harder for him to make certain decisions. He’s a hunter too. He kinda grew up into it, being around my brother and me.” He wasn’t yet prepared to explain Castiel’s presence and relationship to the family. That would only complicate things further and beg innocent questions with uncomfortable answers. “Anyway, I’ve spent decades trying to teach him how to make moral choices and be a good hunter, but… the other day he told me that he just wants me to give him the right answer. I get that things don’t come as easily for him, but I’d been hoping that with so much guidance and help and practice that he’d feel okay taking some initiative. I just… I feel like I failed him.”

“Some people need extra help,” she told him. “That doesn’t mean you failed him.”

He rubbed his face as he thought about Shae and Kesi. Every child was different, and there wasn’t anything inherently wrong with treating them differently, but he couldn’t help but feel like he’d let Shae down. Because of her being some amount demon, he’d kept her at arm’s length in ways that he hadn’t done with the others. It’d been for her protection. He couldn’t be the one to put a bandage on her scraped knee. He couldn’t let his traumatic relationship with demons impact her.

“Life’s been unkind to my daughter. I’ve tried to protect her, but the world is….”

“Sam, I’m a cop. I get it.” Juneeta exhaled slowly. “I used to be a beat cop. Back when I started, there was so much violence in the streets. After listening to all my stories from work, Faham wanted us to homeschool the boys. The only thing stopping us was we didn’t have the money.”

He didn’t volunteer the fact that Shae and Kesi had been homeschooled. Granted they weren’t entirely human, posing some risks with what they might blurt out when they were younger. Also, with him being largely confined to the base due to his poor health, he’d been an obvious resource for their non-hunter education. Even with his illness, it had been a time that he looked back on fondly. In hindsight, part of the appeal had been that under his watchful eye, he could help make sure the kids were alright.

“After I lost my arm,” Juneeta continued. “I used to worry over my sons all the time. I… I got into a fight with my youngest about him wanting to be an inclement crisis responder out east. He called me after his first month of training telling me that I was right that he couldn’t do it. I-I never said he couldn’t; I was scared and said he shouldn’t.”

“What happened?”

“I apologized, and he nearly failed out twice during the first six months, but by the end of the program he was in the top twentieth percentile of his class.” She was quiet for a few seconds, before adding, “He calls me every night when he saves someone’s life.”

“That’s great,” Sam said, genuinely touched by the idea of someone persevering like that and being able to do good in the world. That ideal, unspoiled by complications, he wanted that for Shae— but he couldn’t help getting an uneasy feeling that he was fumbling the idea.

“Sam, no matter how much we want to, we can’t protect our kids from everything. What kind of message are we sending when we try anyway?”

He could see what she was getting at. The suggestion that his protectiveness and fear might negatively impact the kids was valid. Whether that was the case was something he’d need to consider and if so, he’d need to figure out how to improve things. It felt strange to think that his good intentions might’ve actually caused problems— Well, that had been something of a theme for Dean and him in their youths. He’d just thought that he’d grown beyond those sort of mistakes.

In a soft voice he sighed, “I just don’t want them to get hurt.”

“I know,” she assured him. “But everyone needs to fall down and get a few bruises. Failure is how people grow. That’s how they get confidence.”

He wasn’t sure how well any of that applied to Jack or Shae, though he still appreciated the seasoned advice. It was true that he’d probably been a parent longer than her, but his household had been unconventional to say the least.

He admired Juneeta all the more for how confident she was when it came to dealing with her kids. If only it came so easily to him, though he supposed it was a matter of practice and internalizing those lessons.

“I’d kiss you, if I could,” he whispered.

After a moment, she said, “While you’re kissing me, I’d drag my fingers down your torso and undo your pants.”

In the dim light of his nightstand lamp, his eyebrows rose. He glanced at the door to make sure it was locked, then leaned back on the bed. A bit self-consciously at first, but then with less reservation, his fingers moved along his stomach and pushed down the waistband of his boxers.

In a cautious, measured voice he asked, “Do you want to hear what else I’d do to you?”

“Yeah,” she nearly purred. “I’m ready for it.”

* * *

The next morning, Sam barely looked at the news for more than five minutes before turning it off. One of the first articles he saw was about a firefight that had broken out between fifteen police officers and eighteen members of one of the Eastside District gangs, the Crimson Blades. He didn’t normally pay attention to gang-related activity, but the various chapters of the Blades liked to use nonhuman imagery that sometimes was too close for comfort. The news article’s photograph of a dead Blade wearing a red bandanna decorated to perfectly depict a set of vampire’s fangs over his mouth was particularly off-putting. As far as he could tell from a quick glance through the headlines, there was hardly any better news to be found.

A new bounty notification popped up on his screen. Taking on new cases was out of the question as far as he was concerned. They already had their hands full with the one job, never mind the few easier cases that were going neglected. He was just about to dismiss the alert when he saw the nature of it. A shipment of human organs had been intercepted. In and of itself that was only slightly noteworthy, but the image of the moving van caught his attention. There was a spray painted sigil by the driver’s side rear wheel. It looked like a preservation rune. The car was dinged up with aged paint, so the sigil might’ve been a relic, though it would’ve been quite a coincidence that it would appear on a transport full of possible spell components. But it didn’t make sense for that to be the case while magic was so weak. He flagged that case as one he wanted updates on, but didn’t bother clicking through all the disclaimers and waivers necessary to download the available case files.

When he was done with breakfast, he went to his office. He placed a couple pillows on his desk chair and settled in for a long, tedious day. At Shae’s behest, he’d taken a bowl of freeze-dried protein puffs with him, to pick at while he worked. 

He was reviewing the surveillance footage since his last shift for anything that might’ve been missed. It was easy to slip up while trying to monitor multiple feeds for days on end. The process was hard mental labor, the bizarre combination of crippling boredom, watching every detail, and the tension of needing to be ready should something break in the worst way possible.

Unfortunately, even with the advantages of modern technology, the fastest he could watch a continuous feed and still comprehend it was approximately 1.75x speed. The software automatically truncated frames where fewer than .025% of pixels changed, condensing the overall video somewhat, but that left a huge amount of content for him to dig through. And while there were things like facial recognition that they routinely run to flag all the people, that didn’t do much for the sometimes vital details.

Sam was munching on an artificially shrimp flavored puff when he spotted something that caught his eye. There was an elbow, belonging to someone wearing a charcoal grey coat, sticking out from behind the edge of a building. It moved into view, lingered for a minute or so, then vanished. Sam checked the time stamps; none of the frames had been dropped by the software. The person had actually disappeared.

Teleportation was a distinctly ethereal trait. He pulled up the two other camera feeds and jumped to that window of time, hoping to find a better angle on the person. None of the cameras covered the blind spot. He rolled the footage on all three feeds back fifteen minutes, to the same time stamp, then watched. Five minutes prior to the shot of the elbow disappearing, a man in a charcoal grey coat exited the building to tell something to another man who was leaving. It was someone that they had never witnessed walking into or out of the building before, which didn’t count for much since the guy could evidently teleport.

Sam’s stomach knotted as he recognized the man from the video. The guy had been at the police station. He’d been one of the people in business suits, talking with the higher ranking officers, while he’d had his panic attack…. His panic attack that might’ve been triggered by sensory input, like the scent of the first full demon he’d crossed paths with since his incredibly traumatic binge. That might do it.

Demon or not, they needed to know why that man had been at the police station. Sam immediately called Juneeta on the burner phone. She didn’t pick up right away. Each time the phone rang he could feel himself getting more worried. He was just about to hang up when she answered.

In a quiet voice she asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Are you alone?”

“Give me a sec.” He could hear her speak to someone for a bit, then walk through a few bustling rooms before entering someplace much quieter. “Alright.”

“I’m gonna send you a picture of a man that I think was at the station the other day. Can you covertly check the visitor log to see who he is?” He sent the surveillance photo to her, then continued, “I saw him right before—” 

“That’s Melker Olsson.” She hadn’t needed to bother looking him up. That didn’t bode well. “He’s CEO of CynderAid. They’re a contractor we use.”

He started searching for the company name. “What do they do for you?”

“They sell us….” Her voice trailed off. For a second, he worried that something might’ve happened to her, but she continued before he could say anything. “They manufacture implants.”

His mouth went dry. “What do the implants do?”

“They’re memory chips.”

Sam could imagine it now: One or more demons taking over a company that gave them the police force as thousands of eyes and ears. Depending on how the implants were designed, they might be able to implement subtle manipulation through the same technique that had been used with the victims. It was hard to imagine that the vetting security technicians for the police would authorize an implant capable of regulating officers’ blood chemistry, but that wasn’t really an obstacle for a demon. Melker or an accomplice could simply possess whoever was needed to rubber stamp the contract.

He covered his face with his hand. The implants were neurological; that was for sure. “Do you have one?”

“No. So far only field officers and everyone out of the academy in the last few months.” She exhaled slowly. “I’m too close to retirement, not worth the investment— Oh shit.”

“What?”

“The riots. The brass just closed a deal with CynderAid to start upgrading chips. They’re implementing it in waves, but all field officers are supposed to get ones that help with combat reflexes.”

“That’s chemical control, not just spying,” Sam told her. 

Melker had to have known that killing a bunch of cops would trigger a public backlash and enable them to market even more invasive implants. That’s why they made a big show out of what could’ve easily been a possession-aided heist. No one would’ve known with a little care. But they wanted everyone to know that the police were vulnerable. Most important was for the police to know that.

“Listen to me,” he said, deathly serious. “Don’t let anyone give you an implant.”

“I’m not in the field—“

“Just don’t, no matter what. It’s like mind-control-level hormone regulation.”

“What? You’re serious?”

“They’re behind the chips in the three victims. The grunts that fought me, I think they’re other victims, controlled through an AI implant,” he explained.

“You’re talking about brainwashing.”

“I’m talking about programmed, mass-market possession,” he corrected.

“Fucking Christ,” she exhaled. In a fatigued, yet pragmatic voice she said, “How can I help?”

He could’ve kissed her. Next time the two of them were alone he would. “I’m still trying to figure this out. I’ll let you know. In the meantime, if someone from CynderAid or anyone else approaches you about me, you don’t know me well. I’m a grouchy, old nutcase, who you begrudgingly throw leads sometimes.” That was pretty much his reputation at the station among the handful of people who’d heard of him. “People like Melker really don’t like me.”

“What is he?”

Sam didn’t even hesitate. He could feel the truth. “A demon.”

“I’m gonna need a much better explanation than—“ There was the sound of someone opening the door and saying something quickly before hurrying off. “Something’s going on outside. I’ll call you.”

No sooner had she hung up than he received an incoming call from Shae.

“Go upstairs and look at the sky!”

Sam didn’t bother hanging up. He ran down the hall, out of the base, and took the elevator up to the seventeenth floor as fast as he could. In the elevator he was panting to catch his breath while trying to focus on every sound on Shae’s end of the call instead of his aching body. It didn’t sound like she was being attacked, and that frightening scenario didn’t quite fit with looking at the sky. He had no idea what that was about, but as soon as the doors opened, he rushed to the closest window overlooking the city.

Above the smog, drifting between the black and silver spires, was a floating ribbon of shimmering green light that was at least two miles long. The sight was stunning in its beauty, yet oddly haunting. It almost looked like the northern lights, but they were too far south.

“Can you see it?” Shae asked.

“Yeah.”

“It’s not showing up on video or in photographs. The news feeds are freaking out and they can’t show it,” she explained.

He’d heard of patterned materials that could distort video records or create dark masses on the feed, though he’d never heard of something just not registering at all while still being visible to the naked eye. There were plenty of optical tricks, but the physics of that was too hard for him to imagine.

“Is this tech?” he asked, hoping for it to be something as simple as that, some prank or experiment.

“I don’t know.” He could hear her walking by a crowd of people speculating about it. “I was at the store when every screen jumped to breaking news. Went outside to see for myself.”

Hundreds of tiny flashes of white and orange light started sparking all around the anomaly. He couldn’t make out what was happening. After a second or two, he heard the faint popping of what had been explosions.

“Come home,” he told Shae. “Right now.”

“I’m already on my way,” she replied, then hung up.

Sam stared at the eerie glow. He couldn’t remember seeing anything quite like it, though it was triggering a vague feeling of deja vu. A terrible sinking sensation started to grow in the pit of his stomach. It was terrifying in its own right, but it was also a symptom of something more. The clashes between police and civilians. The bombing of a police station. He thought back to the graffiti urging onlookers to take back the night, in the embrace of fucking space monsters. It was chaos—strategic chaos, to the benefit of the demons who were currently making a power play in both law enforcement and the most vulnerable members of society.

He hurried back down to the base, head still spinning from the discovery. When he entered he saw Dean’s image on the display in the entryway waiting for him. Sam was about to explain to him what was going on with the sky, since his brother had no way to actually observe it himself, but Dean spoke first.

“Sam, around the door.”

For a split second he didn’t understand what he was being told, then he turned around, expecting to see something threatening. Of course he’d walk into an ambush. That was just the sort of thing to top off his week. But it was something even less expected.

He stood there, gawking at the carefully applied warding along the entry’s door jamb. It wasn’t freshly drawn; they hadn’t bothered buying abjuration equipment since the spellwork throughout the city had faded. For the first time in years, those old sigils were faintly visible. The protective warding was actually working again.

“Magic’s back,” Sam whispered.


	16. On Demons

Sam went into the bathroom to splash some water on his face while waiting for Shae and Jack to return home from their errands-cut-short. His hands rubbed his weary eyes, then dragged across his scars, wrinkles, and stubble. He was barely paying attention to the stray water dribbling down his wrists and neck, wetting his light grey shirt. Looking up at his reflection in the mirror, he saw a man overwhelmed and disheveled— Melker wasn’t entirely wrong about him. Without drying his hands, he touched the damp fabric on his chest. Below the wet cloth, his tattoos were noticeable.

He didn’t take his eyes off his reflection as he slowly slipped his shirt up over his head. For decades he’d largely avoided looking at the tattoos that had been placed on him. The intricate ink work conjured memories he wished he could forget. It filled him with shame over what he’d done, but he’d never really considered it as anything more than an unwelcome memento. Just a little while earlier, Nima had treated it with more reverence, not just sentimentality.

The tattoo was of the Crujah battling back the ethereal gods, the enemies of the Blood Gods. It was supposed to be prophetic— for whatever that was worth. Prophecy had ruled the first twenty-eight years of his life, only to be bested. Some vampire folklore didn’t carry much weight for him, except to the extent that it might give him insight into those who would believe it.

At the time that the tattoo was being applied, he’d been too high to really listen to the explanation. Much of the mythos had drifted in one ear and out the other, as he directed his attention to more pressing concerns. Only after he’d sobered up did he care about the lore of the Crujah, and he’d lost access to his best resource: the nest.

The one interesting aspect that had stuck with him, from having this reputation, was that it hadn’t just preceded him within the vampire community. Toward the end of his massacre on the demons of the city, several of his prey had referred to him as the Crujah. He didn’t know whether the demons had put two and two together to figure out that he was the Boy King with the Demon Blood, or if they actually feared that they’d met a vampire demigod. Either way, he’d scared the literal hell out of the city for decades. 

Now the demons were back and they had a plan. Rather than make some brutish frontal assault, Melker and his ilk had been organizing in the shadows. They’d taken meatsuits in a strategic position, then started sowing the seeds of chaos in order to slither into the more control. 

Nima had been forward-thinking in her move to establish a legitimate business for her nest, bringing the vampire community into the modern era where money and technology ruled. Well, the demons had evidently learned that lesson as well. One could hardly get by on an evil laugh and small-scale violence. The game had changed with the times.

He had changed too; the question was whether he could make a difference against such powerful forces.

* * *

“The green stuff faded away about ten minutes ago, but people are still freaked out on the street,” Shae said while entering the meeting room where everyone else was already gathered. She dropped into an open chair, then looked to them for insight. “Does anyone have any idea what that thing was?”

“The news is speculating that it’s a PR stunt gone wrong,” answered Kesi. “But no one’s taken responsibility for it and nobody can tell how the tech works.”

“I think it was magic,” Sam announced.

“What?” Jack asked in disbelief. “None of us have seen a spell anywhere close to that in forty years.”

“The base’s warding is active again,” Dean told them from his place on the wall. “The sigils lit up around all our exits, including the garage.”

Kesi leaned forward in her seat, an expression of complete shock on her face. “We don’t have magic like that here. The ecosystem’s dead. Maybe the tiniest of spells with a huge chance of messing it up, but not protective warding, and not that green cloud.” She waved her hand upward, in some vague gesture. “That thing destroyed every drone it touched. It’s too big to be magic.”

Sam couldn’t blame Kesi for being so skeptical. She was the youngest of them, having grown up after the magic had begun fading. To her, spellwork was a foreign concept or at most minor novelties. The green light and the illuminated warding were both things that were only observable and therefore subject to misinterpretation, but he had something a bit more subjective to offer to the mix.

“I think I had a vision,” Sam added. “Maybe I’ve been having them for a while.”

Dean said, “You’re serious?”

“Like psychic visions?” Shae asked.

At least once throughout their lives, Sam had mentioned to each of the kids that he’d had visions as part of a truncated story of the whole Apocalypse fiasco. With Jack, he hadn’t really gotten into it or his other powers much because at the time he couldn’t use them to help Jack get control of his own abilities. After that, as it became clear that across the board, magic was collapsing, he’d recounted even less to Shae and Kesi; that confusing, messy era was closed… or at least it had been.

“I’ve been having dreams and seeing things.” He wasn’t sure how much detail to get into. There was still a lot of parsing to do. “It’s not as clear as it used to be, but there are pieces that are starting to click. Graffiti calling for the return of magic and to take back the night. I could hear people talking about escalation, just before everything started going crazy. I-I saw one of the missing werewolf teens in a lab. There have just been these pieces.”

They all stared at him, stunned by what he’d said, or maybe by the fact that he hadn’t mentioned anything sooner.

“I thought they were nightmares,” he added quietly. “They’ve just been nightmares since… for a lifetime.”

Without meeting his eyes, Shae reached over and lightly took his hand. He wanted to tell her that he’d had plenty of trauma even before she had been born, but he didn’t want to imply that she would be expected to feel any bit responsible. He had to believe that she understood this was his own burden.

“Why’s this happening?” Kesi asked. “Why now?”

Sam hated that it was really happening, but that didn’t make it any less of a reality. “One of the suspects teleported in our surveillance footage. He was at the station when I had my panic attack, that was triggered by me catching the scent again.” He couldn’t bring himself to look any of them in the eyes, especially Shae. “We’re hunting demons. They’re back.”

For a brief second, Shae’s hand turned cold and clammy in his before she let go and pulled away. It was understandable shock. The elephant in the room that had followed Shae for her entire life was being brought to the forefront. It had been naive of them to hope that demons might not return in their lifetimes, though it had admittedly taken four and a half decades for them to be a blip on the radar.

“Demons,” Dean sighed. “Fucking hell.”

That was easily one of the worst species they could be dealing with for so many reasons: practical, political, and personal.

Sam absentmindedly tapped his fingers on the table. As unequal as the supernatural power dynamic had been for the last few decades, at least it had been stable. Reintroducing demons or any ethereals in such force risked returning to a state of gang warfare. And after so long, there were hardly any hunters left alive who remembered what it was like.

The demons had pushed the vampire nests underground and destroyed many old lines. There had been massacres, claiming many humans in the crossfire, which had been covered up by blaming them on a handful of terrorist groups. But times were truly changing. Nima had seen her people following the old ways to their demise, so she had elevated her nest to meet the new standards of strength: innovation, entrepreneurship, and literal-cutthroat business savvy. It only made sense that their old enemies would eventually rise to meet them.

And yet, Nima hadn’t mentioned any demons in the city. She’d actually offered to import prey for him. It seemed likely that her nest didn’t know about the demons’ ploy. Why would she? Prior to the spell in the sky, there hadn’t been any indication of ethereals or magic that might rise to the level of a threat. Melker’s scheme involved a lot of preparation, which only seemed to be coming together right around then.

“We need to stop Melker and his demons before they get too powerful,” Sam said.

“In theory, killing the demons might weaken the returning magic,” Kesi pointed out in an academic tone. “Getting rid of all the demons last time was what started magic weakening before.”

“Is that a good or bad thing?” Dean asked.

“Since when do you like magic?” countered Sam.

“Since I became a cloud of spooky, undead energy,” he replied a bit indignantly.

“Even stopping this group of demons might not be enough to end the resurgence of magic. We don’t know how many there are behind this operation, if there are more out there doing other projects, or how much they’re contributing to the ecological swing,” Sam pointed out. “The more momentum this gets, the harder it’ll be for it to collapse again. That green light spell means that there are actually spellcasters in the city and they just advertised. All of that we can deal with as it becomes a problem, but right now one of the big concerns is stopping this before the vampires get involved.”

“You want to stop them from going after Nima,” Jack speculated.

Sam exhaled slowly. He didn’t appreciate the intentional or accidental implication that he might be concerned for her. Despite the fact that he felt bad about the way things had gone between them, he wasn’t about to let her actually weigh on his decision-making process. He had countless higher priorities than a regrettable ex. Anyway, she was plenty capable of taking care of herself, should the situation get out of hand.

“If we have demon-vampire turf wars again—it’s gonna be a hundred times worse than before. Melker’s manipulating innocent people, who knows how many.” Sam pursed his lips. “Nima’s wealth isn’t gonna be enough of an advantage over this new kind of enemy. If she feels threatened, she’ll start turning people again.”

Shae suggested, “So we have to stop Melker without the vamps finding out.”

“She already has her people spying on us,” Jack reminded them. “We don’t have long before she starts to figure things out; if not what we’re facing, then at least where our target is.”

“That isn’t our only reason to hurry,” Sam commented. “CynderAid has contracts with the police, which they’re looking to upgrade. Detective Kohli said they’re finishing up on a deal to install similar chemical control chips in all field duty officers.”

“That’s-that’s thousands of people,” Kesi replied.

“You’re telling me,” Dean said, brow furrowed. “That with these implants and some AI, as few as one demon can control thousands of people— including nonhumans?”

“‘Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,’” Sam recited the Arthur C. Clarke quote. “Demons just figured out a more efficient way to possess people.”

* * *

After the meeting, Kesi ran off to cross check the records of CynderAid’s other holdings to verify that the building they were targeting was the likely location of the implant server. Meanwhile, Jack decided to go through storage to gather everything that was valuable against demons. Shae sat there for a few moments, trying to process the sudden news. Her dad lingered, watching her with a pensive anxiety. Seeing the potential for a private conversation between parent and child, Dean wordlessly excused himself, disappearing from the nearby monitor.

“I know that this is complicated for us, and for you. Are you okay?” Sam asked.

Shae looked up at him and smiled halfheartedly. “It’s a new type of bad guy. I’ve got some flies in my stomach.” She stood up, then stretched. “I just need time to digest and get used to it. I’ll be fine.”

In an oddly encouraging tone, he said, “I know you’ll be fine, but I’m here for you.”

She stared at him for a moment, caught between confusion and gratitude. As supportive as he’d been of her throughout her life, it wasn’t common for him to express that sort of encouragement outside of a specific lesson. Though, the circumstances were unusual and it wouldn’t have surprised her if he didn’t know exactly how to start a conversation about something as complicated as what demons meant to the two of them.

“Thanks, Dad,” she told him as she got up and gently squeezed his shoulder before heading out of the room.

The hallways of their home seemed oddly quiet as Shae walked back to her bedroom. Despite her attempt at keeping up a cool exterior, she knew that there was a wrongness to everything. The boogeyman was real. This whispered about thing, a scenario that she’d pushed from her mind her entire life was happening.

There were other demons. There were _other_ demons.

When Shae entered her bedroom and closed the door, she waited a moment, listening to the silent hallway. Once it was clear that she was alone, she stood in front of the mirror, studying her reflection as she had done so many times before. It was the same uncertain face staring back; one that looked slightly like her father, but more so like the faces of the demons he’d killed. At least she had the same eyes as her dad… when they weren’t solid black.

Her entire life there had been an eerie hush surrounding her identity. As a child, it had barely occurred to her that such a thing as demons existed. For years, the painful subject of why she was different hadn’t come up, much like that of Kesi’s mom. Each of their lives were unique and not every piece needed to be explained. And that was fine— for a while.

It was hard to remember, but Shae was fairly certain that she had first found out she was a different species than her dad at the age of eight or nine. She had always wondered why no one else could make their eyes turn black and why it inspired such disturbed reactions. Dean and Castiel had always tried to get her to go back to normal as quickly as possible. Her dad instead became incredibly withdrawn in those moments. He’d tried to reassure her in a gentle voice that no one was upset, but at times he would have trouble looking at her while she was like that.

The other red flag that something was wrong was when she would get hurt. Shae had hated bleeding as a child because she didn’t understand why it evoked reactions it did. For every cut and scrape back then, her tears were almost never because of pain. It was the way that Dean or Jack would immediately grab her and take her to be isolated when she was being bandaged. The one time that she recalled her dad having been there, Sam had actually pushed her away from him before leaving as quickly as he could…. Something was wrong with her blood, and her dad couldn’t stand the sight of it.

Eventually, the adults had explained that she was part demon. It had been easier to go over once Kesi was born and the issue of her little cousin’s origins had to be somewhat explained. Neither of them had a mom around; that was normal. The difference was that Kesi had one. Both their dads had been very tight-lipped, but it was clear that Dean had been hurt on behalf of his daughter for the abandonment. Meanwhile, Sam and the others took on the appearance of shame when it came to Shae’s birth.

The news that she had been the byproduct of a spell had been a mixed blessing. No one had specifically wanted her, though there was no doubt in Shae’s mind that they had all grown to love her. But the revelation had also brought up the question of what the spell had done and why. That’s how she found out she was demonic: There had been something wrong with her dad, and when it was pulled out of him, she was the result. The demonic essence had been something like a poison to him, making him do odd things.

She had been twelve when Sam had sat her down and explained that the reason why he’d had so much demonic essence in him when she’d been created was because he’d been drinking the blood of demons. He had been addicted to it. In a very real way he still was. That’s why he couldn’t stand to be around when she was bleeding. Back before he’d started taking the serum, the compulsion had been so hard for him that Shae wondered if he’d intentionally resisted physical therapy to keep himself at a disadvantage should the worst happen.

Everyone wished that the circumstances could be different, but for her entire life Shae had found herself lying awake at night, seeing clearly in her pitch black room. The rest of the family tried to ignore what she was, and she pretended to ignore it, as difficult as that might’ve been. But now there was a real necessity involved in understanding demons.

She grabbed her tablet, lay down on her bed, then began scrolling through the archives for information on demons. Compared to all the other sorts of nonhumans, there was very little data. It was possible that the prevalence of demons had dropped off about the same time that the family was switching over to digitally storing their records. For a long time, they’d clung to the arcane paper books and journals of the Men of Letters.

When she went down to the base’s paper archives basement, it was hardly any more helpful. There was a layer of dust covering all but a few recently accessed cabinets and bookcases. The aisles of filing cabinets and storage lockers were more disorganized than she would’ve expected from a place that was technically under the authority of her dad. Though, glancing back at the staircase leading down to the archive’s sub-basement, he might’ve abandoned the project while he was having mobility problems. By the time he was well enough to descend and climb the stairs, almost two decades worth of cleaning up after Dean, Jack, and Castiel might’ve seemed like too daunting a task.

Regardless, she dug through files for an hour or so, looking for any mention of demons, with surprisingly little success. The species was supposedly one of the major types of ethereal, but so far she’d only seen reference to them in passing. She knew they were from Hell and they could be dangerous, which hardly defined them as an enemy. After some searching, she found a file folder that had been labeled “Demon Activity: 2031,” but it’d been crossed out. Dean’s handwriting below it noted, “Stripped down, Sammy’s request.”

Shae stared at the message. That was the year that she’d been born. Her dad didn’t want a record of what was happening with the demons back then. She knew that he was ashamed of what he’d done during the binge before she’d been created, but he also had tried to erase the context surrounding it.

No one wanted to tell her the details; it’d been that way her whole life. The reveals of what she was had been coaxed out over the course of years, yet there were still fragments missing from the greater picture. There were so few records that she could find from back then, especially from when she was born. The story was too traumatic or unseemly— or maybe her family was just trying to shield her from a truth that the others thought she wasn’t equipped to confront.

Well, with the return of the demons, the past was rushing to confront her, whether they liked it or not. The terrain was shifting around them with the resurgence of ethereals and magic in their city. As things were, Shae didn’t know where she stood, but she had an idea of who might be able to fill in some of the gaps.

Shae went back up stairs, grabbed her leather riding jacket and helmet, then collected her motorcycle from the garage. No one saw her leave. It was for the best. She wasn’t sure if she would have been able to explain what she was going to do, and she hated the idea of someone trying to talk her out of it. 


	17. Sam's Secrets

Shae rode through the familiar asphalt maze that had suddenly taken on a sinister hue. The many-colored lights in the glass windows of the spires disappearing into the clouds seemed suddenly suspect as a few softly flickered, like unnatural flames. She swerved around the occasional scrapes of drones that littered the ground.

With her motorcycle helmet covering her face, she indulged in blinking her eyes black. She normally wouldn’t have done that, even while shielded like that from the gaze of onlookers. There had been a time when the act had been an unseemly thing to do. Now she didn’t know what to think of it.

Her inhuman sight painted the shadowy streets and canopy of concrete byways and metal grate walkways in shades of pink and orange. She didn’t know what periodic hot spots of yellow or cool purple patches meant. Nobody in her life had ever been able to see that spectrum. Explaining it to someone else for study felt hopeless and she hadn’t used it enough to venture a guess at anything’s significance.

She parked her bike on the sidewalk right in front of the elegant double doors to Nima’s building. Before taking off her helmet, she spotted a crow perched on a sign across the street; its eyes were filled with an unnatural silvery light. Shae made a point of not staring too long, then blinked her eyes back to normal before taking off her helmet and climbing off the motorcycle.

“Excuse me,” the doorman said as he hurried up to her. “You can’t park—“

“Tell Nima,” —she tossed her keys to the guy, who reflexively caught them— “that Shae Winchester needs to talk to her.”

She was quickly finding herself beyond strained for patience. The night’s developments had been confusing and unsettling. As concerned and uncertain as she was, the smaller worries, like not offending the help, were fading away in the background noise. She was there to get answers from the woman in charge.

Evidently, either the name Shae or Winchester was already familiar to the man because he quickly held the door open for her while muttering, “I’ll inform her right away.”

She hardly had a chance to enter the atrium and study the marble statue of the woman before the elevator door dinged. 

Nima walked out wearing a set of matte black, silky trousers that were perfectly tailored to hug her slender thighs. She didn’t appear to be wearing a blouse, instead donning a slim dark red suit jacket that fastened with a single silver clasp between her breasts. The collar of her jacket stood up to wrap around her nape, though it didn’t conceal a set of old scars in the shape of a bite mark on the side of her neck. She paused, hands on her hips, as she considered her guest for a moment before saying, “You know, your father wouldn’t be happy hearing that you came to see me.”

“He wouldn’t, would he?” Shae replied, a little bitter at yet another potential barrier placed by her dad. “I don’t care. I have questions.” Nima raised an eyebrow, then gestured for her to continue. “You said you remember when I was born.”

“I was there.”

Shae stood motionless for a moment, processing the implications. She’d known that her dad had worked with Nima and that the spell had been used against his will. The actual circumstances, setting, and other players hadn’t ever really taken shape in her mind. It made sense that Nima might’ve actually been there at the crucial moment; she’d been counting on the vampire having been at least somewhat in his life prior to it.

“I want to know about my father,” she said, nearly defiantly. “When he was with you.”

Nima smiled and held out her hand. After a moment’s hesitation, Shae took it, allowing herself to be guided to the elevator, then down a hallway that was only illuminated by streaks of backlit white and grey marble that were embedded in the brushed steel walls. They entered a parlor containing two black leather chaise lounges and a black marble bar.

When they were by one of the lounges, Nima released her hand, implicitly inviting Shae to sit down. The hostess didn’t miss a beat, walking over to the bar and pulling a chilled bottle of dark liquid from behind it. She plucked two clear crystal tumblers and began pouring. If anything, Shae had been expecting for them to be waited on by one of the nests many servants, but there was no one else around.

“Did he ever tell you how we met?” Nima asked as she restopped the bottle.

From the pieces Shae had heard over the years, they knew that her dad and Nima had teamed up, but not the specifics. There were plenty of nonhuman family acquaintances; a vampire one wasn’t so unusual that it begged questions. 

“No.”

“He saved my life.” She handed one of the glasses to Shae, then took a seat beside her despite there being a second chaise lounge. “A rival gang of demons had captured me and three of my nest mates. It was typical back in those days; take an enemy and torture them to death while coaxing secrets. I was the only one left alive when your father attacked them.” She sipped her drink, eyes looking past her surroundings, caught in the memory. “I’d never seen anyone fight like him. I haven’t since. He killed seven demons in hardly two minutes, and it wasn’t even personal or wrathful. They were prey. It was beautiful.”

Shae shifted a bit, though she didn’t comment. In an abstract way, she’d known that he’d killed demons and drank their blood, but it hadn’t occurred to her that he’d hunted them as a predator might. The elation on the vampire’s face at the thought was a testament to his ferocity. 

“He was so focused on the hunt that he was adrift. I’d see that a lot in young vampires, before they learn how to survive in this world as one of us. I convinced him to let my nest help him, to locate prey for him and to give him shelter. We quickly became partners and lovers.” A wicked smile spread across her lips and she nearly blushed despite her ghostly pale skin. “He saw to it that I became head of my nest. When the six lesser nests of the city came to see if the rumors of the Crujah were true, he directed them to fall in line. He left the politics to me, focusing instead on decimating our enemies and establishing our reputation for strength.”

“That’s not like him,” Shae said quietly. “He likes to be the brains, not the brawn.”

“He’s good at watching from the shadows, but he likes power,” she countered. “Sam always had a great weapon in his mind, but he’s too smart to ignore the impact of tearing an enemy limb from limb in front of its allies.” Nima took a sip of her beverage, savored it a moment, then observed aloud, “You haven’t tried it.”

Shae nodded politely before having some of the dark liquid. It was clearly alcoholic, but there was a distinctly iron aftertaste. Of course it contained blood. She was in a nest’s domain.

“It’s the real thing, in both respects.” Nima swirled her glass. “Forty-year-old scotch and the blood of a young man—a fine specimen.”

Shae’s stomach churned at the idea that it had come from a human. “Don’t you make synthetic blood?”

“And we could drink synthehol too. But why would we? Not when we might otherwise have something exquisite.” She patted Shae’s thigh. “You deserve exquisite things. You know, your father drank warm blood from the bodies of humans—”

“Demons,” Shae corrected in an attempt to defend his honor. “He killed demons.”

“You understand that demons possess humans? Most demons, anyway.” She smiled knowingly at the only demon not capable of possession. “There’s an extra… flavor that the demons give the blood, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that he isn’t intimately familiar with the depth of the flavors.” She took another sip before asking, “Do you like the taste?”

Shae felt intensely uncomfortable. She wished her drink was considerably stronger and minus the human blood, but she wasn’t about to push her luck by asking for another. After having a bit more, she honestly replied, “I don’t know. It’s not something I’d really tried before.”

Nima studied her face for a moment. “You don’t remember when you were part of him, do you? He was the most powerful person I’ve ever known, and he was mine.” Her eyes lost some of their light, nearly turning remorseful. “I lost him the day that you were made. They tore him apart to pull you out of him.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” Shae told her, eager to stay on her good side.

“I know, child.” Nima caressed Shae’s cheek. “That was the worst day of my life. I couldn’t save him or you.”

“Save me?” Shae asked.

“Of course. Maybe it wasn’t clear how it happened, but you were a baby that came from my lover.” Her expression dimmed to one of profound regret. “He looked dead; I thought maybe he was. There was blood all over his clothes. He was so pale and still. Dean and the angel got to him before I could— Dean had poisoned me with deadman’s blood. When I saw that I couldn’t get to Sam, I tried to crawl to you. Jack picked you up from the ground. The way Dean looked at you when the angel told them you were a demon, I thought he’d kill you right then. But they took you too.”

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Dean had been initially wary of an accidentally made demon baby, but it was still jarring to hear that he’d looked at her with such disgust or hostility. His brother had just been maimed. He’d been upset. 

As much as that might make sense rationally, it still hurt to hear. And not just the way she’d been received, but also hearing what the spell had done to her dad. It hadn’t occurred to her that being torn from him might’ve been truly violent. He’d been left bloodied and near death. Her creation had been a horrific event. She was in such a daze that she’d missed part of Nima’s words.

“—They were so desperate to stop him, to control him. Your dad had attracted the attention of hunters, bounty hunters, power-hungry monsters looking to make their name. They were coming for him nearly every day. Then after Twilight Plaza, there was a high bounty on his head.”

Shae’s brow furrowed as she turned to stare at Nima in confusion. The Twilight Plaza Tower attack was one of the last in a series of bombings throughout the city just before she’d been born. A building had collapsed, leveling the area. Reconstruction of that block had taken almost eight years.

“Twilight Plaza…?” Shae asked. “That was a terrorist attack.”

“Don’t tell me you believe everything you see on the news. That’s the naive human story.” Nima patted her knee. “Some hunters tried to kill him; quite a few actually. He had a flare for solving problems with one elegant flick of the wrist.” She gave a little shrug while muttering, “Destroying the building was a bit heavy handed for a distraction, but admittedly, it did the job.”

“Dad….” He’d destroyed a building full of people as a distraction for some hunters. She couldn’t even process that sort of play by the typical villain, let alone her sweet, cautious dad. Through a tightness in her throat, she managed, “Dozens of civilians died.”

“Two hundred and thirty-eight,” Nima corrected coolly.

That didn’t seem possible. Even if he’d gone insane or evil, it wasn’t like an intoxicated, primally driven person to lay out a trap involving staging bombs to collapse a building as a mere distraction. It didn’t make sense logistically. She had to be mistaken.

“How could he demolish an entire building?”

Nima sipped her beverage, then casually replied, “With his telekinesis.”

“His what?”

* * *

Sam was compiling the floor plans from all of the online archives regarding construction permits for the demon stronghold. They didn’t have a full blueprint of the place, and the information could be out of date if any changes were made illegally, but it was a start. He had identified many load-bearing walls, stairwells, and four elevators— all features that were likely left untouched. He was cross checking the position of windows in their surveillance photos versus one of the maps when Shae came in.

She walked right in to stand next to him, then said, “You never told me that you killed people.”

“We’re hunters,” he replied while checking off the last window. “Killing—“

“Civilians. Almost four hundred over five weeks.”

Sam froze. His hands gripped the side of his desk, searching for stability. He had always hated what he’d done, but hearing his atrocities spoken by his child made it so much worse. His throat grew tight and his eyes began watering. 

“That’s why Dean and Cas did this to us,” she continued. He couldn’t discern the tone of Shae’s voice. It was a mixture of emotions that his shaken mind wasn’t capable of parsing. “They couldn’t stop you any other way, and they had to stop you.”

Sam nodded, sending tears streaming down his face. He couldn’t bring himself to meet her gaze; he was too ashamed. “I’d lost control. I didn’t care who got hurt.”

“You were a monster.” 

The words cut straight through him. It was one of the things he’d hoped to never hear from her. He didn’t know how to respond. It was true. But before he could find the words or summon his voice, she continued.

“The demon blood made you a monster. I….” Shae was trembling. “I made you— I don’t want to be the thing that made you kill those people.”

That was the last thing he’d expected for her to say. For years he’d been worried about her internalizing her being a demon as a reflection of her worth as a person, but it hadn’t occurred to him that she might take on guilt for what he had done before she’d been born. He hastily got up and pulled her into a hug. Shae weakly struggled for a moment, resisting the comforting act, but stopped and buried her face into his shoulder. Sam’s shirt grew damp with her tears as he held her and whispered, “No-no. None of it was your fault. None of it.”

“I’m the part of you they tried to get rid of. I’m the worst part of you—“

His head was spinning, trying to find the right thing to say. “That’s not true,” he assured her. “Dean and Cas—“

“I don’t want to be a demon,” she murmured into his collarbone. “I don’t want to be evil.”

“Hey, whoa.” Sam leaned back a bit so that he could look her in the eyes. He cupped her damp cheeks. “You aren’t evil. I promise you that.”

“The demons are out there kidnapping, mutilating, killing— They’re tearing the city apart.” Shae reeled. “I checked around. I found more on the hunters network’s digital archives. They slaughtered so many people for fucking fun. They’re evil—”

“It’s not that simple. Hunters try to make it simple, but demons were… are…. They’re people.” He stopped himself from venturing into saying something stupid, like suggesting she eventually go out of the city to meet a demon safely apart from all the drama. 

“They’re ethereal,” Shae replied bitterly. “They come to our home and play with our lives. It’s hard enough to live in this world, and these ethes show up just to make it worse.”

“Cas was ethereal too.” Sam pursed his lips, catching himself referring to their lost family member in the past tense, but he didn’t correct himself. “All three of you kids are part ethereal. That doesn’t mean that any of you care less about the world and protecting people than anyone else.”

“Jack’s half angel. Kes is half reaper. That’s good and neutral,” Shae countered. “They’re built from a different fiber than me. I’m made from however-many sadistic fucks and murders. I’m not even just half demon. It’s not like you fucked a demon and I’m your little abomination. It’s not like I’m really….” 

Her voice trailed off as new tears welled up in her eyes. He held her close once more.

“Listen to me: I don’t care how I got you. I don’t care if you’re half demon or a whole demon. You’re my kid. I’m your dad, and I love you.”

Shae’s voice shook as she whispered, “Dad, I don’t know how to be a demon.”

“You just be yourself, like you always have. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. Just be you.” He kissed her forehead before gradually relaxing the hug. “Actually, I want to show you something.”

Sam took Shae’s hand and led her to his bedroom. He went over to his dresser, then crouched down, searching for something while Shae sat down on the foot of his bed. From inside the bottom drawer, he pulled a bundle of thick leather, before returning to sit beside her. His fingers rested on the package for a moment as he considered the many confusing feelings that it inspired in him, and would soon stir in her, but it was too late to pretend. The bell had been rung. The hornets’ nest kicked. He unwrapped the unusual looking weapon from long ago and held it out to Shae, who cautiously took it.

“That knife kills demons,” he said. “It’s not versatile in the same way angel blades are. It was made to kill only one thing.”

Shae’s eyes lingered on it for a moment before she looked up at him. Her posture was that of quiet concern, the sort that made one seem small and vulnerable.

“Before that was mine,” Sam continued. “It had belonged to someone I knew. We were…. It was complicated, but there was a time when I had a lot of respect for her. I guess part of me still does, when I push aside all the drama. She was a demon.”

“A demon had a demon-killing knife?” Shae asked, clearly stunned by the concept.

“The first time I met her, she killed three demons with it while saving my life.” He exhaled a dry chuckle at the memory of her single-handedly slaughtering half of the deadly sins. It was certainly a bold first impression. “She wasn’t perfect or a hero, but she never did what was expected. I hunted with her on and off for two years, and during that time she did a lot of good. In the end, she made a choice—a bad one, but it was hers to make because, honestly, she was so stubborn and strong-willed that I don’t think any creature in existence could actually tell her what to do.” Sam smiled sadly at Shae. “She’s a part of you too. I used to worry when you’d do things that reminded me of her; mostly when you don’t listen to me. Now.” He shrugged. “Maybe I’m glad you have that same fuck-you-I-won’t-do-what-you-tell-me spark.”

She sat in quiet contemplation for a long while. Her posture relaxed a bit and she idly played with Ruby’s knife. After a bit, she looked up at Sam and asked, “She’s a part of me? You ate her?”

He hesitated a moment, trying to find a concise and tactful way of correcting the record, but ended up settling on, “It was consensual, and it wasn’t what killed her. Like I said, our relationship was… complicated.”

Shae nodded, wordlessly agreeing to not pursue those graphic details, but did tell him, “You used to fuck Nima.”

“You went and saw her?” He was too emotionally exhausted to give Shae another warning. That explained what she’d meant by saying that she’d checked around. Well, she was back safely, albeit a bit upset from the experience…. But that was admittedly his fault, even if Nima had been the one to reveal the secret.

“And you used to fuck her,” Shae pressed, unwilling to just let it go.

Sam softly chewed the inside of his cheek. “I was high on power and she was ambitious. At the time, it made some screwed up sort of sense.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about you two?”

“Because….” He sighed and rubbed his face. “I don’t hate her. I’m ashamed of her, what I did with her, what I did to her— I honestly don’t even blame her for trying to kill Dean. But I know she’ll go to… extremes.” His voice shook a bit at the memory of her cutting out the eyes of a member of another nest because she spotted him rolling them at the mention of Sam. “And if I don’t hate her, if you knew that, then maybe you wouldn’t see how dangerous she is.”

“I could see that she’s dangerous in the first three minutes,” Shae assured him. “And you should talk about being able to spot dangerous women.” She held up the demon-killing knife. “Or do you have a type?”

Sam exhaled a weak laugh and tilted his head in acknowledgement of her point. He glanced over at Shae. She wasn’t crying anymore, but the tears were still drying on her cheeks. He could see fatigue or sadness— probably both, softening her eyes. 

This was a conversation the two of them should’ve had years ago, allowing plenty of time for them to process and grieve together, but he’d foolishly tried to shield Shae from it altogether. He should’ve admitted to himself that a revelation beyond his control would be one like this, where a looming conflict would push Shae to investigate her origins on her own or an outsider would reveal what he’d done. And now, they were under the wire. Melker and his demons would shortly make their move to infiltrate the police force. There wasn’t time for him and Shae to fully heal; they had a job to do.

He wrapped his arms around her in a seated hug. “I know it’s a lot. I’m sorry. I was ashamed and just trying to protect you.”

Shae reached up and gently patted his head. “I know, Dad.”


	18. The Calm Before the Storm

Before Sam knew it, the family gathered for the mission briefing. With the demons preparing to expand their influence over the police force and already possessing an unknown number of users, there wasn’t much time to spare. They needed to consolidate the information they had, come up with a list of absolutely final preparations, then get moving. Each of them had gotten a minimally sufficient amount of sleep and nutrition to get them through the immediate need; later would come the stims.

When they were ready, everyone looked to Sam, expecting him to lead the discussion from his position of experience. That was how they’d always done it, and in many ways it made sense considering their enemy. Shae and Kesi were understandably at a disadvantage, having never faced demons— but Jack had fought plenty of them.

“Jack, how about you take lead on the briefing,” Sam suggested, eager to see how he’d cope with that tiny measure of responsibility. “When it’s time to get into the tech and maps, Kesi and I can cover those pieces.”

The nephilim nodded, clearly surprised to be given that role, but he didn’t resist it. “We have two clear objectives,” he began. “Disabling the server that’s sending instructions to the implants, and killing the demons behind this.”

Kesi corrected, “We’re also trying to save anyone already under their control.”

“That’s a secondary objective,” Jack agreed, then added, “But our focus needs to be on the big picture. If it takes killing the pawns in there to save thousands of lives, then it’s not even a question.”

“Not everyone is as comfortable with that sort of utilitarian thinking,” Sam told Jack. “But you make a good point. This mission has broader-reaching consequences than we’re used to. We all need to be thinking about the big picture.”

Shae tilted her head to the side, then asked, “So how’re we supposed to knock out their server, kill the bad guys, and save the day?”

“Well, between all those things, taking out the server sounds like the easiest,” Kesi commented.

“Says you.”

“Once we get inside, I can trash the server—“

“Fancy computer virus?” asked Shae.

“I was thinking thermal grenade.” Kesi gave a little smile of false innocence that mirrored her dad’s grin behind her. “I’ll need to breach their system too, so that I can delete any backups—“

“If you see something incriminating while you’re in there that’s mostly harmless by itself, keep a copy for us,” Sam suggested. “Assuming we succeed, we’ll still probably have to explain ourselves to the police.”

That was part of the reality of hunting where they lived. It was common enough that the police would overlook all the minor incidents, especially in the less affluent neighborhoods. A full-scale assault on an implant manufacturing facility didn’t seem like the sort of thing that would receive a blind eye.

“Alright,” Jack continued. “Kesi will focus on documenting what she can and destroying the server. Will we need to search for it once we’re inside?”

“I have a pretty good guess at a location,” Sam replied while pulling up the maps he’d compiled. He zoomed in on a section of the fifth floor. “It looks like there’s a halon system set up in this room here. The proposed plans for various permits a couple years back included insulated channels for a lot of wiring running in and out of there. Even if this was all installed before the demons showed up, they’d be idiots not to use a space specifically designed for storing servers.”

Jack recapped, “So when we’re inside, we’ll get Kesi to the server room, then defend that location before going to fight the demons. Which leads us to how we’re going to fight demons.” 

He lifted a cloth bundle from the ground, then unfurled it on the table, revealing a collection of three angel blades. The sight of them made Sam’s stomach knot. The set had been used by himself, Dean, and Jack. Castiel had had his on him when he’d gone missing. Now it seemed that Kesi and Shae were inheriting their fathers’ blades.

“These can kill demons,” Jack continued. “As well as most other creatures short of an archangel or deity. But they’re all blades, which raises the question of Sam.”

They all turned to look at him. Using the blades would kill the demons, but they would bleed, potentially triggering his addiction. In theory, they could attempt to exorcise all the demons, though that would only delay their plans and out the family as a threat. It was possible that they could trap each of the demons, then have the others kill them after he had left the area, but that didn’t seem very feasible.

“I’m a liability,” Sam told them. “I don’t know what else to say.”

Jack shrugged. “You’re also the one with the highest kill count for demons.”

“My methods weren’t the kind we want to repeat,” Sam countered, then let out a long sigh. Shifting in his chair made various aches throughout his body flare. He was already tired and they were just talking about the damned mission. “Anyway, I’m losing my edge. Maybe we can explain away the panic attack, but I’m slowing down. There was a time when I could’ve slipped those tails or defended myself better.”

“You killed one of them,” Dean replied.

Sam’s lips thinned subtly at the reminder. Whatever satisfaction one might’ve gained from delivering such a swift defeat was taken away by the discovery that the goon had likely been one of the many victims in this whole mess.

“That was an accident.”

“Dad.” Shae looked at him with a hint of desperation in her features. “This is an all-hands-on situation. If you can fight at all, is there a way we can get you out there? How bad would it be if you just smelled the blood?”

He felt incredibly self-conscious. Shae had just found out the depths he had fallen to while on the drug. She knew the risks, maybe not from personal experience, but there was no doubt in his mind that she wasn’t discounting it. There had been too many tears for her to not be taking it seriously— But the question of hypothetically what could be gained if they could overcome that challenge, that was what she was asking.

“I could fight it a bit, but the longer I’m around it— It’s gonna get worse. You might have to tranq me in order to get me out of there at that point. Then you’d have to chain or lock me up.” His skin was warm and there was a gnawing ache in his stomach. “If I actually get ahold of some blood, then you’ll have to use the antagonist agent I keep in my emergency kit.”

“That stuff could mess you up. If we stun you—“

“Without it I’ll wake up just as dangerous as before.” He locked eyes with Shae. “If I get demon blood in my system, I’m a threat to everyone, especially you. Don’t let me do something like that.”

Shae nodded, jaw clenched, unable to speak.

“If the problem is bleeding,” Kesi interjected. “What if we cauterize the wounds?”

“Does anyone have access to some lightsabers?” Dean commented.

“Maybe not quite that exotic. What about some liquid cauterizer?” she suggested. “If we occasionally coat our blades, it should at least reduce the amount of blood that’s spilled. And we should have some on hand for us in general.”

“That would help,” said Jack in agreement.

Sam thought back to the precautions they took whenever Shae was cut. They cauterized her wounds, but they also ran the air filters.

“I could use my portable respiratory filter,” Sam added. “It’s graded for biological agents. It only covers my nostrils, but as long as I keep my mouth closed it’ll do something.”

“You’re gonna look really weird charging in there with a resp in,” said Shae.

“Combat isn’t always sexy,” he replied, earning an expression from Shae that toed the line between an eye roll and a stifled laugh at the suggestion that her dad might be considered sexy under any circumstances.

“Says you. I looked great,” objected Dean.

“So we’ll treat our blades as much as we can, and you can use a resp,” Jack redirected the conversation back to the issue of how to mitigate Sam’s potential exposure to demon blood. “If we do that, do you feel comfortable joining us?”

Shae, Jack, and Kesi watched him with quiet anticipation. Just a day earlier it had seemed that he was being retired from the field. He hadn’t liked the decision, but it had made sense, especially while they weren’t sure what had caused his panic attack. Now, there was a new and troubling enemy before them, and the others were eager for him to help. But more than the arithmetic of stacking one side against another, he could see the mission as being very anxiety provoking, for Shae in particular.

“Dad, do you think you can do it?” Her voice had the most subtle hint of both worry and hope.

“I’ll go,” he agreed. “I can increase my serum dosage a bit to give me slightly better reflexes and strength.” He chewed his lip while speculating, “It mimics the physiological effects of demon blood, but it also seems to help take away some of the urgency of the addiction. I still want it, but my body at least doesn’t think it’s starving.”

“Are you doing melee?” asked Kesi. “If so, you’ll need to be extra careful about the cauterizing liquid.”

“I don’t see an alternative,” he said with a shrug.

“What about your telekinesis?” Shae asked Sam.

He pinched the bridge of his nose before replying, “I can’t do that anymore.”

Kesi went wide-eyed at the thought. “Wait, you used to have telekinesis?”

Sam could feel his ears turning pink. “It was one of my powers back when I had them.”

Shae pointed out, “You’ve been having visions.”

“Visions are like on a different level.” He struggled for a moment to articulate such a subjective thing. “Visions were always more innate and passive, but telekinesis and psychically killing demons was harder; took more focus. They were only really things that I could do when I was bingeing. There needs to be such a high amount in my system that it’s nowhere worth the risk of attempting.”

“Well, if you’re using melee—“ Shae passed him one of the angel blades, then held up the demon-killing knife. “—I’ll take this one.”

Dean’s image on the display became fuzzy with a slight blue tint for a second before returning to normal. When Sam raised an eyebrow at him, he explained, “I just got chills.”

Sam has to admit that it was strangely poignant seeing Shae adopt that particular blade. He’d given it to her as a symbol of the nuances of demons and their family’s relationship to the species. It hadn’t been his intention for her to use it over any other weapon, but if it meant something to her, there was immeasurable value in that.

“We have another problem,” Jack said, bringing them back on track. “One of the challenges of fighting demons is that they can teleport, either to retreat or to sneak up on you. If we don’t have the ability to block their escape, then we’ll just be inconveniencing them.”

“So how do we stop them?” Kesi asked, thoroughly interested in the logistical considerations.

“Salt, iron, and devil’s traps,” Sam answered, then looked to Shae. “They might affect you too. Those things never worked on me, but you’re much more demonic.” He hated the thought of them running into a scenario that would place Shae in a situation she couldn’t get herself out of. “If we figure out a way of locking that place down…. I don’t want you getting trapped in there.”

“We’re all going in there together,” she pointed out. “If there aren’t any of you left to let me out, then I feel sorry for anything else that’s trapped in there with me.”

“At least it’s motivation to not split up,” noted Jack. “So how do we actually pull off locking down the site?”

“You could pour a salt ring around the building,” suggested Dean. “You could even use a drone to be more subtle.”

“The amount of salt it’d take to draw a continuous line around the building would be too much to do covertly,” Kesi countered. “Otherwise it’d be such a small line that the ambient moisture could ruin it.”

“Is there something else we could lay down?” asked Shae. “How hard is it to use iron?”

The metal hadn’t been commonly used in construction or commercial production in almost sixty years, making it rare enough that the question wasn’t unfounded.

“It’s heavy and hard to find and manipulate,” Sam replied. “But there might be a way of getting around that. Alchemy was originally about changing one element into another, usually iron to gold. If we calibrate a pretty basic alchemy spell, we could turn another substance within a certain geographical range into iron.”

“We just have to figure out the best way of constructing a barrier out of something unusual enough that we don’t accidentally turn half the city block into a hunk of metal,” Shae added, making the others all tilt their heads or raise eyebrows at the mental images it conjured.

“Ideally, a barrier that will also trap the nondemon pawns too,” Jack told them.

Kesi looked up at them all with a broad smile on her face. “Ooooh, I just had some fun ideas.”

From the wall, Dean beamed. “That’s my girl.”

Kesi immediately began searching for something on her bracer, but gestured in a vague wave for the others to continue.

Jack gave a half shrug, then started summarizing, “We’ve covered our objectives, and Sam’s special considerations—” 

“We haven’t talked about one of the objectives,” Shae interjected. “We have to assume that we’re gonna be facing some of those brainwashed implant users. And I don’t know about anyone else, but I really don’t want to kill a bunch of people that got caught up with the wrong crowd.”

“We might not have a choice,” Jack replied. “Nonlethal combat doesn’t scale up well. We don’t know how many people we’ll be facing.”

“Can we stun them with a spell or something?” she suggested, hopeful that the newly accessible tool of magic might provide an easy solution.

Sam considered it before answering. “Targeted spells are kind of tricky by themselves, but with the magical environment being unpredictable like it is, I don’t think it’d be a safe bet. It could either not work or we might get friendly fire.”

Shae’s brow furrowed in disappointment at the answer, but after a second or two, she got up and walked over to her dad’s coat that was hanging by the door. She pulled from one of his pockets the false GPS emitter that he liked to use on the cybernetic bugs.

“Kes,” she said, finally getting her cousin to look up from her research. “How hard would it be to make this spoof Melker’s server?”

“What?” asked Kesi, but she leaned forward with scientific curiosity.

“The users are basically rubbugs, organics with hardware pushing them around, so let’s treat them the same way. But instead of a GPS signal, give them a stun.”

“Huh.” Kesi nodded. “The implants don’t pack enough charge to electrically stun a person, but maybe we can design a chemical cocktail that’ll do the same thing. It might take some time to figure out a universal formula that could safely knock out a human and a werewolf—“

“Isn’t that what the built-in AI is for?” Shae countered. “You said the chips ping the server asking for instructions, then they implement it. Just pretend to be the server and give them orders.”

“Could we get the users to help us fight?” asked Jack.

“That seems like an awfully complicated command to get across,” Kesi answered. “We’d have to distinguish between both sides, then the chip would have to relay a large amount of instructions that would go against any repetition-based loyalty to their captors—“

“What about telling the implants to make the users sleep?” suggested Shae.

Kesi began chuckling and nodding to herself as she opened up a new tab and started jotting down what looked like a to-do list. Without looking up she said, “I think I can work with that, but I need to get some things off my queue. Sam, can you find out what the hell ceramic is made out of?”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “It’s clay.”

“Can you find out what clay is made out of?”

He opened his mouth to respond, but realized that he technically didn’t know what distinguished clay from mud— or why it might be important, but she had several ideas that she was running down and he could find the information easily enough. When she got inspired on a project like that, it was best to let her go.

“And can I get the total outside dimensions of the target building?” she asked, before quickly adding, “I don’t need them now, just before we leave.” She stood up, getting ready to run off in pursuit of whatever she’d thought of.

Taking her cue, Jack said, “If there’s nothing else—” 

“Hey, guys,” Dean interrupted, stopping them from ending the briefing. “I want to help.”

They all turned to Dean, who was patiently waiting on the wall. None of them knew what to say. He was trapped in his digital prison. In all the years that he’d been a fixture in the base, he’d never been able to be more than a source of morale support or levity. That was a sort of helplessness that haunted Sam.

“Dean….” He didn’t know what to say.

Dean’s image flickered a bit, intermixed with the screensaver he used while not wanting to be seen. He took a deep breath of nonexistent air, then asked, “Am I a ghost or am I a crazy fucking AI? Do we have any idea what I am?”

In a moment of painful honesty, Kesi replied, “No.”

Dean nodded to himself for a few seconds, in a move that made Sam shift in his seat, ready to get up to reset his brother to an earlier saved state. But before he could, Dean said something that stopped everyone in their tracks.

“Well, if we don’t even know what I am, how are they supposed to stop me?”

Sam just stared at Dean, blinking in shock. As a family they had spent years teaching their own homebrewed AI how to recognize Dean’s ghost. Meanwhile Dean had learned how to interface with the digital medium. Whether he was currently a ghost who could mess with computers or simply the strangest artificial intelligence in existence, a typical computer system, even one with its own AI, would have a hell of a time understanding him.

In a stunned, quiet voice, Sam speculated, “We could load you into their network and you could just have at it.”

“I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting to fight or break something that’s real,” Dean replied, a bit too much emotion in his voice for the cool exterior he was trying to put on.

“What happens if we destroy their server while Dean is on it?” asked Jack.

“If you’re an AI… then you’ll be wiped,” Kesi answered. Her tone was quiet and reserved compared to the enthusiasm she’d had just a minute earlier. 

“Will there still be a saved version of me?” Dean asked.

“Yeah, back here at the base.”

“Well, you won’t be alone.” Dean nodded solemnly. “I guess, that takes the edge off dying again.”

“If you’re a ghost,” Kesi continued. “Then hopefully the critical mass of magic will be enough so you can drift back to a material anchor and we can bring you home.”

“Okay,” Dean sighed. “That doesn’t sound so bad….” His image lagged a bit and lost some saturation as he muttered, “God, I hope I exist.”

* * *

Once Sam was done running down a handful of quick questions for Kesi, he went to his room to get his equipment. He strapped on his old angel blade holster, then rechecked his personal emergency kit. The small steel container was designed to clip onto a belt or pocket and be able to survive a fight. He opened it to examine the prepared syringe that was waiting inside. It was time-stamped, indicating that there was still another year before it would need to be replaced.

The antagonist liquid was technically an antidote to his addiction, but it was also a poison in itself. It would break down any serum and demonic essence in his bloodstream, even whatever might be possibly lingering in his organs and other tissue, but much like the victims in the case, that sort of internal destruction would be very harmful. 

He’d nearly died when Shae had been magically ripped from him. Back then he’d been younger and in significantly better shape, though he’d had far more demon blood than ever before in his life. The trauma had been devastating. He still couldn’t remember much of the first couple weeks. The pain had been so intense that except for a few fleeting moments of consciousness, his brain had mercifully decided not to retain the memories.

The antagonist agent would likely damage him in a similar way, scaling up the carnage to match however much serum or demon blood was in his system. It was a measure of last resort, but he still needed to take care to find a balance between the temporary benefits of taking more serum and the risks associated with having it lingering in him should the worst happen.

He loaded a fresh syringe into the synthesizer, then instructed, “Aila, prepare a concentration increase of 30%.”

The pleasant feminine voice warned, “Please be advised that that dosage is above normal parameters and may cause significant withdrawal symptoms for up to fifteen days.”

“I understand. Do it.”

The machine hummed briefly as it generated the serum for him. He pulled the cartridge out and turned it over in his hands. That dose would be enough to get him moving, drowning out the minor aches and sharpen his reflexes slightly. As much as the serum had been acting as maintenance treatment for him, this sort of increase was an abuse of it. He was treating it as a stimulant and it would inevitably bite him in the end, even if everything went according to plan. But the kids were counting on him to be there.

And if things did go wrong….

With the exception of the fight at the club, he hadn’t been in significant combat in almost a year. His endurance wasn’t what it was. Regardless of the 30% serum stimulant, they were facing down an assault on a building. That meant probably multiple fights over an extended period of time. He hadn’t done that sort of work in a decade or more; it wasn’t something the kids had done much. But the situation was dire, calling for some risk-taking. He found a second syringe that was small enough to fit inside the emergency kit beside the antagonist liquid, then loaded it into the synthesizer.

“Aila, prepare a concentration increase of 100% from the last dosage.”

“That is well above the advised parameters. Withdrawal effects will be certain to occur for a minimum of ninety-four days and may extend further.”

Sam let out a long sigh. That was an optimistic assessment. “I understand. Just make it.”

“Please recite your admin key phrase in order to override existing safety limits.”

He rubbed his face. “Some say the world will end in fire. Some say in ice.”

“Please be advised to avoid using the antagonist injection within twenty-seven days of the increased dose,” Aila informed him. “Premature use of the antagonist may result in shock, severe cardiovascular damage, impairment to the autonomic nervous system, temporary or permanent paralysis, or—“

“I understand.”

He listened to the machine hum and watched the cylinder fill with clear liquid. After staring at it for a moment he placed the 100% syringe into his emergency case, alongside the antagonist agent. He clicked the metal case shut while muttering, “In case of emergency, make bad decisions.”

Sitting in the quiet calm before the storm, he took a few minutes to collect himself. As far as he was concerned, this would be his last mission of the sort. If he survived it, he would likely be worse for wear. Anyway, he needed to get more comfortable about letting the kids take the lead and risks. That was how they’d grow. As much as he worried about them, he needed to believe in them and show that faith.

Sam picked up his comm and messaged Juneeta’s burner. “Thank you for the advice about my kids.” He hesitated a bit before continuing. “I can’t tell you the last time I had someone to talk to like that. Thanks for being a friend.”

She replied, “Just a friend?”

He smiled, but his heart ached a bit. “No ‘just’ about it. I’ve got something I need to take care of, but afterwards I’ll take you up on that cocktail.”

After a minute she messaged back, “Be careful.”

He sat there, trying to figure out whether to reply or what more to say when there was a knock on his bedroom door. 

“Dad, we’re ready when you are.”

Sam stared at the message a moment longer before turning off the comm. He picked up the syringe of the 30% dosage of serum and injected it into his thigh. The dull pain in his thigh quickly faded along with many of his chronic aches. 

“I’m ready.”


	19. The Assault

They took a single car to the building, parking just around the corner from one of the entrances. None of them got out immediately. There were a few balls they needed to get rolling first. Sam, Jack, and Shae checked their surroundings while Kesi typed away on her bracer.

As she worked, Kesi spoke on the live comm channel for the mission. “Okay. Dad, I’m gonna send you in, following a little script that’ll unlock the doors for us. Basically, as soon as you get in there, just start breaking everything you can as long as it doesn’t have my signature on it, okay?”

“Break stuff,” Dean’s voice said over the comm. “I’ve definitely got that.”

“Once we get inside, I’ll be executing a few routines,” Kesi continued. “One will be reconnecting our comms up to you. If you don’t hear from us for a while, see if you can access their security system. You might be able to monitor us that way, even if we can’t communicate.”

“Piece of cake,” he said sarcastically.

“I’ll try to work around you if I can, but it might get messy.” She absentmindedly chewed at her fingernails. “The most important thing is that I’m wearing your necklace. If things skew fast, just ditch the tech and find me.”

“Don’t sweat, baby girl,” he assured her. “I’ll find you.”

Sam gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze, then added, “He’s too stubborn not to.”

Kesi offered a weak smile before saying, “See you inside, Dad,” then tapped a few commands into her tablet, while updating the others. “Pinging the server with the credentials that the implants use. We’ve got a route. Dropping in a little routine to reset the physical security.”

Sam watched the building. It was the moment of truth, waiting to see if anyone noticed that every modern lock in the facility had just unlatched. After a few seconds of holding his breath, no one had come running out the front door.

“I don’t see any alarms,” Kesi informed them.

“You said whoever wrote their code fucked up something basic. Maybe they’re just bad at tech?” Shae speculated.

Sam shook his head. “Demons have the technical knowledge from their meatsuits and they have their own judgment about things like risks. That’s how they’ve gotten this far. They might not know how to marry those two things together fully, but don’t underestimate them.” He rolled his eyes at an unpleasant thought. “It’s not likely, but for all we know they’ve got armored bots in there.”

“We should have packed more explosives,” muttered Jack.

“Alright, the coast is still clear. I’m sending Dad ahead in fifteen seconds,” Kesi announced. “Let’s move.”

Sam climbed out of the car with the others. He pressed the small portable respirator to his face, then wet his angel blade with the cauterizing liquid as he walked across the street. His emergency kit was mounted on his belt. Below his jacket and pants, he wore some lightweight impact-density armor that would hopefully hold up against high-force hits like small caliber bullets and stabbing motions. Unfortunately, it wasn’t designed to take slashing or glancing blows. Over everything, he had a satchel slung over his shoulder, containing the materials for the alchemy spell.

Shae and Jack took the lead. Both wore slightly heavier versions of the same under armor that Sam and Kesi had. They were the muscle for the outing, and would need the extra protection. Each was armed with a blade capable of killing demons. The idea to carry a secondary weapon had been dismissed as inviting more bloodshed to no real benefit; both of them hit harder than a human and were trained in hand-to-hand combat.

As soon as Kesi got out of the car, she released three matte black drones that were each roughly the size of a teacup saucer. They zipped off, high into the air, disappearing into the hazy night. From the time they left her, a countdown started on her bracer’s display. 

In a quiet voice, she warned them, “Twenty seconds before the first trap.”

Jack and Shae entered through the front door first, followed by Sam and Kesi. Until he got the alchemy spell off, he wouldn’t be focusing on combat, but first, Kesi needed to do her part.

“If they don’t already know something’s wrong, they’re about to,” she commented, then tapped another command out. “Get ready.”

An alarm chimed throughout the building as an artificial feminine voice announced, “Inclement weather detected. Shuttering in progress.”

With nearly all the warnings and safety features bypassed, the building immediately began its lockdown protocols. Ceramic-coated steel plates slid down, sealing every door, window, and exterior vent in the building in anticipation of a storm that wouldn’t come.

Sam immediately knelt down on the floor and laid out the materials for the spell. As he worked, Shae and Jack stood defensively in front of him and Kesi. He finished positioning the scrap of iron and shard of ceramic tile, then began reciting the incantation. The sound of approaching footsteps started to draw his focus, but he forced himself to keep his attention on the spell. With the ambient magic still questionable, he couldn’t just go through the motions. He took deliberate breaths between carefully enunciated words.

“First trap is up,” Kesi quietly informed them.

The drones that she’d released outside had successfully taken position high above the building. Using lasers, they were continuously painting a devil’s trap large enough to encompass the building. Eventually, someone might notice the lines on the pavement outside or the drones themselves circling above the building, but for however long it might exist, the trap was an extra layer of protection.

As the footsteps got louder, Shae whispered, “Enter Sandman,” while switching on the handheld device that would hopefully trigger sleep in the implant-users. She gestured for Jack to stay where he was, protecting Sam and Kesi, then silently sprinted up the hallway to meet the pair of incoming footsteps. Just before reaching the intersection, Shae pressed herself to one wall, then crouched down, taking partial cover behind a doorway.

The footsteps slowed slightly and lost their normal rhythm for a moment just as the two men stepped into view. Before the pair could get a good look at everyone, Shae lunged at them. She grabbed the first one’s gun, pushing it up away from the family, before slamming him back into the second man. The patrol flailed briefly firing one shot wildly, but she quickly jabbed them both in the faces as the sleep-inducing signal subdued them.

Sam didn’t hear anyone running or panicking at the gunshot, so he focused on finishing the spell. With the last words of the incantation, all of the ceramic on the shutters turned to iron. The demons were trapped in there with them. 

He looked up to see Jack offering Shae a hand up from on top of the unconscious men. She picked up the two guns, then began stripping them. The cautious move filled him with some pride. She wasn’t about to leave the lethal weapons readily available, nor would she attempt to use them against either an enemy that they’d be ineffective against or victims-turned-pawns.

“Dad, can you hear us?” Kesi asked over the comm, while drawing her angel blade.

Now that the alchemy spell was done, Sam could draw his own blade, and they could get moving. Their goal was to locate the server, and while they had a good idea of where it was, having someone on the inside was even better. 

After a few seconds, Dean replied, “I hear you, baby girl. Just things are weird in here.”

She shared an anxious glance with Sam. “Are you okay?”

“Everything tastes like the number eight.”

Sam reflexively shook his head at the observation. His brother certainly didn’t experience things in a way that most people could understand. The important thing was that it didn’t sound like a dire problem.

“Dean, we’re gonna need to get up to the fifth floor,” Sam reminded him. “If you can figure out how to access the elevators, to give us a little protection from overrides, that’d be great.”

“Okay. Okay.” Somehow Dean’s voice seemed to sound far away, as if he’d stepped away from a microphone and was muttering to himself while reading the labels on switches.

Jack gestured for everyone to stop. The four of them froze, allowing the quiet footsteps of a few other people to become audible.

“What’s… what….” a woman groaned down an auxiliary hallway. The sound of two bodies collapsing with a thud to the floor was followed by some shuffling.

“Guys?” a man asked in a fatigued voice. “What the fuck?”

Shae sprinted down the hallway towards the still-conscious man, Jack on her heels. Before Sam could catch up, there were a couple thwacks and a grunt. He arrived in time to see, Shae choke-holding the man into unconsciousness, while Jack disarmed the other victims.

“A faster acting stunner would be nice,” Jack commented.

“Yeah, and we’d have deep fried anyone with a bad heart,” Shae countered as she lowered the man to the ground. She took a moment to catch her breath and wipe some light sweat off her forehead. “Anyway, these are our warm-up.”

They got a bit deeper into the building when Dean asked, “Are any of you in an elevator?”

“No.”

Sam was about to suggest that he try to access the internal security cameras, but was interrupted by the distant sound of an alarm blaring and metal screeching further down the hall. As it became louder, he realized that it was an elevator car plummeting through the shaft. A moment later there was a loud crash, several floors below them at the base of the shaft. 

“Okay, so that’s what that does,” Dean said, almost to himself.

Shae and Jack turned around to stare at him and Kesi. The others looked as unnerved and exasperated as he felt. Sam pursed his lips briefly. At least Dean had checked to make sure none of them were inside the thing before figuratively cutting its cables. 

“Hey, Dean, you know what. Go nuts with the elevators,” Sam told him. “We’re taking the stairs.”

Shae tilted her head at his chest, wordlessly indicating his physical health. “Are you okay with that many flights?”

“I’m on enough stims that I can do four flights,” he assured her. “Preferably not at a run.”

A fleeting smile passed her face as she commented, “Let me know if you want a piggyback ride.”

* * *

“I’ve got access to some of the security cameras!” Kesi squealed as they started climbing the stairs. “Looks like a few groups of people are busy examining the shutters. Two of them are trying to break— Oh shit!”

Sam quickly turned around and hurried down two steps to see what had startled her. The video feed showed demonic smoke clouds pouring out of a man and woman’s mouths before beginning to swirl around the sealed door, trying to find a gap.

“They’re demons,” he explained. “That’s what they look like outside their bodies.”

Shae moved down to join them and see a smoke cloud for herself. After a moment, she blinked her eyes black. Her mouth hung open for a second, then she quietly said, “The guy in his skin still, standing next to them, he’s one too.”

“You can tell the difference through a video feed?” Kesi asked, shocked by the idea.

She shrugged. “I guess.”

Sam wasn’t about to give a lecture on ghost photography, so he just said, “It’s not the weirdest interaction between the supernatural and tech. Shae, start counting.”

They stood there in the stairwell, Jack watching for threats from above, while Sam watched below them. Kesi hastily cycled through as many video feeds as she could as Shae ticked off demons on her fingers. The seconds passed painfully slowly, knowing that they were sitting ducks, even if the intel would be invaluable later.

“Eighteen.” When Sam turned back to look at her at the news, she was staring at him with an uncertain innocence. “Is that a lot?”

He wanted to wrap his arms around her and Kesi, even if they wouldn’t actually protect them. With Kesi being less combat trained and him being in subpar physical shape, the odds weren’t good. He solemnly nodded to her question, then said, “But it’s doable. We just make smart plays, use their own cameras—”

Clear liquid started trickling down the stairwell from somewhere high above them.

“That was me,” Dean interejected. “Ninth floor used to have big tanks.” 

“Tanks of what?” asked Jack as he took a few visible sniffs.

There was a moment of hesitation before Dean answered, “Liquid,” then quickly added, “I didn’t see any flammable or corrosive warnings for those ones. Maybe still don’t go up there though.”

“Well,” Sam sighed. “We also have a perpetual element of surprise.”

They proceeded up the stairs. Sam gripped the arm rail as he went, taking care not to do something stupid like slipping and falling in his haste. Kesi stayed back a bit to be at his elbow in case he needed help. There might’ve been a time when he’d find that embarrassing, but honestly he was over it. The family needed him to stay in one piece for this mission; they didn’t need him to pretend to be in peak condition.

Just before they got to the third landing, two men entered the stairwell at that level. They moved quickly, unaffected by the sleep signal.

Sam called out, “Demons!” but Shae was already moving, blade first.

She rushed up the stairs, taking the one that Jack had left her. Jack’s demon struggled to draw a pistol while dodging the nephilim’s attacks. One bad parry left the guy open, allowing Jack to finish him. Meanwhile, Shae had managed to grab her own opponent’s mainhand, head butting and stunning him long enough to stab him.

The cauterizing liquid did the job for the stab wounds, but the larger of the two demons stumbled backwards as he died, tipping over the railing. The body fell about twenty feet in the gap between the staircases before landing head first on the hard metal stairs. Blood began pooling around the corpse.

Sam closed his mouth and adjusted his portable respirator to make sure it was seated properly in his nostrils, then gestured to everyone that he wouldn’t be able to talk or breathe through his mouth until they were further away from the blood.

Shae clutched her own head and blinked a few times. “Fuck, demons have hard bones.”

“That’s one of the reasons you win most fistfights against terrans,” Jack explained.

She rubbed a spot on her forehead that was already getting a small bump. “I thought it was healthy living.”

Sam raised a sarcastic eyebrow at her in lieu of a snarky retort.

Climbing the rest of the stairs without being able to take a breath through his mouth was even harder than before. He pushed on, heart pounding a bit too hard. Jack offered him a hand to help pull him up the last few steps. As soon as they were out of the stairwell with the door closed behind them, he took a deep breath through his mouth. 

Maybe it was his imagination, but he could almost catch an aftertaste on the air. It wasn’t enough to affect him, though it was a bit disheartening. He didn’t like the idea that such a trace amount might be enough to tickle his senses or the possibility that his own mind was exaggerating things as a sort of placebo effect.

They tried navigating the insufficiently mapped maze. On more than one occasion they ran into deadends that hadn’t been shown on any of the old permit requests that Sam had located. The process took precious minutes, during which the enemy might figure out what was happening and spring upon them. Every time they turned a corner, Sam held his breath a bit, hoping that there wouldn’t be a dozen demons waiting for them.

Thankfully, there were a few things going in their favor. Dean was producing chaos on multiple floors throughout the building, creating several dynamic distractions. Kesi divided her attention between following the others and swiping through security feeds, acting as a sort of lookout. And according to her, a fair number of the demons appeared to be focusing their attention on getting the shutters down. Half a dozen of the demons were moving around the building, presumably looking for infiltrators, but the way they were searching indicated that Kesi was successfully keeping them from accessing their own cameras.

“Somebody’s getting smart,” she said as she nearly tripped over yet another unconscious implant user lying on the floor. “One of the demons is at a terminal trying to get back their video feeds.”

“Can you stop them?” Sam asked.

“We’ll find out pretty fast,” Kesi replied apologetically. “Hey, Dad. How’re you doing when it comes to their system?”

They reached a four-way intersection, which made Shae pause a beat and look back to Sam for insight. He gestured to the right. It was an educated guess based on their overall position in the building, but that was the best they were gonna get. Shae and Jack pushed on, followed by Kesi, since Sam intentionally waited back a step to help watch their rear while his niece was dividing her attention.

“Their AI is trying— I don’t know what,” Dean groaned over the comm after a bit. “I just keep yelling Zepp lyrics at it. It’s acting like any given line has a bomb in it and starts picking everything apart.”

“Keep it busy,” Kesi encouraged. “At the very least you’re slowing its processing time down and that helps us.”

“Fuck, this is tiring.”

* * *

After a bit longer, the lights flickered for a moment before switching to a dim emergency lighting system. Every few seconds sparsely positioned red light flashed in warning. It seemed like every other hallway had bodies of unconscious users crumpled on the floor. They passed dozens of them, hinting that maybe there were even larger numbers throughout the building.

The sight of the bodies gave Sam pause. He braced himself briefly as the memory of a massacre he’d committed with Nima’s nest drifted through his mind. For just a moment, he stared at the bodies, checking to make sure that they weren’t injured or dying. There had been a time when he hadn’t given a second thought to the corpses that would be left in his wake. Even if rationally he knew that they were just asleep, some part of him needed to know that they were alive. Between checking them, he hurried the few yards to catch up a few times.

Since he was distracted by the unconscious users, he’d hardly taken in the details around them. The signs and other fixtures had changed from that of business offices to more of a scientific and industrial aesthetic. Fake wooden doors had been traded for stainless steel ones with clear windows to see inside— though a few were covered with reflective tape or actual sliding shields. Shae stopped in front of one door in particular. Her brow furrowed a bit as she stared at a small plaque next to it.

“Is something wrong?” asked Jack.

“I’m feeling deja vu,” she muttered.

When they opened the door, Sam recognized it as the laboratory from one of his dream visions. The L-shaped room that might’ve been sterile but for the procedure tables covered in linens stained with old blood. It was even more unsettling in person, especially with the new context… or maybe it was the almost tacky stale quality to the air. Ahead was the bend in the room and just out of sight would be the tank holding one of the teenage werewolves. He’d seen Shae go up to look at the victim suspended in it and tap the glass, jolting him awake.

“There’s a tank around the corner,” Sam started to explain, but Shae continued.

“There’s a guy in it. He’s alive.” She turned back to Sam with a deeply unnerved expression on her face. “What’s going on? Why is this like this?”

He could hardly speak for a moment, stunned by a thought. “I think you had a vision too.”

Jack commented, “It’s not that surprising that you’d share that power. You used to be the same person.”

Sam didn’t care for such a truncated, albeit accurate, description of their relationship, but he didn’t comment on it. As dismissive as it might be to their independent identities, especially Shae’s, it was a fair explanation of why she would be having visions. She was 40% her father. His precognition may have just been a trait that had been dormant until the city began teeming with magic anew.

Shae shook her head a bit, almost rejecting the suggestion that she’d had a visios. When she opened her mouth, the words didn’t come for several seconds. “I don’t know how to tell what they are: dreams or visions or whatever.”

Sam assured her, “I’ve had experience with them and I didn’t even recognize what they were for a long time. It takes time and feeling it out.” 

Her chest heaved a bit as her anxious nodding gradually turned more determined.

They turned the corner to go assess the situation; the scene was so much like his dream, down to the flashing red light. Shae stared at the victim in the tank. But unlike in the vision, he was asleep, presumably subdued by the effect of the signal they were generating. Despite his still form, the young man appeared truly pathetic and vulnerable. The tubes and wires piercing his bare body were heartbreaking in their own right, but it was likely made worse by Sam having witnessed his fear and desperation in the vision— Shae had probably seen it too. 

Sam touched her arm and was just about to point out that none of them were equipped to help him like that when she spoke. “We aren’t doctors. If he’s stable like this, then maybe he stays here until the cops and paramedics show up.”

“I agree,” he told her. “Just let him sleep, so that he doesn’t worry when we leave.”

Shae put her hand up to the glass and smiled reassuringly at the guy even though he didn’t wake up from his signal-induced slumber. “This isn’t how it went in my dream. He woke up.”

“It doesn’t always happen exactly how the vision shows,” he explained, then added an odd, unexpectedly hopeful thought. “The future isn’t set. We can change things.”

“Then let’s get to that server and make a better future,” Shae said as she signaled to Jack that they were going to continue searching for their true target.


	20. Confidence in the End

By Sam’s best guess they were narrowing in on the location of the server room, despite the sheer number of corridors and obstacles in their way. It was painfully slow going, especially considering that there were enemies searching for them. With enough time their location would be found out, either through regaining access to the security cameras or by following the trail of bodies.

Sure enough, another two demons found them. It was a blessing that they seemed to be searching in pairs. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy as a quick two-on-two melee. One of them had a gun.

Sam hardly had enough time to see the matte black weapon in the man’s hand. He wasn’t close enough to the attackers to help, so he moved to put himself between the firearm and Kesi. 

Shae and Jack were blurs of activity, dividing and charging their foes. Jack dropped the demon with the knife quickly, then turned as the other demon fired his gun point blank at Shae. She stumbled back a couple feet, having lost the momentum of her swing. Jack quickly stabbed the distracted attacker, killing and dropping him to the ground.

Sam ran forward to check on his daughter. She was hunched against the wall, looking at her torso. There was a hole in her shirt, just below her right breast, but the armor below hadn’t been pierced. That didn’t mean there wasn't any damage though. An impact like that was going to leave a four-inch diameter bruise at least. She’d probably had the air knocked out of her. If she’d been human, a couple broken ribs would have easily been due.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded, but didn’t speak for a moment. “That was a hell of a punch.”

Shae was walking a bit slower than before and her posture hinted that she was favoring her right side, but she pressed on, leading the way with Jack. There was hardly any time to recover. They found the server room after only a couple more turns.

“We do this, there’s gonna be a big target where we are,” Kesi warned everyone.

Shae recoated her blade while saying, “You’re the one who wanted a thermal grenade. Either we stand our ground here or we run the second you throw it and hope for smaller groups catching up to us.” She looked to each of them in turn. “We’re here to clear the nest— or whatever you call it. We’re trying to fight all of them eventually.”

“How well can you run?” Sam asked her as he gestured to the injury, then he tilted his head to the side. With a sad sort of smile he added, “How well can I run?”

“Fight here, it is,” announced Jack.

They chose to make their stand at a bottleneck in the hallway just thirty feet down from the server room. Shae stayed with Sam, taking a moment to lean against the wall and recover to whatever extent possible in the minute or so of calm. Meanwhile, Jack escorted Kesi to defend her, should some demon be lurking in the glorified computer closet.

“Dad, we’re ready,” Kesi announced over the comm when she was in position.

“Don’t worry, baby girl,” Dean said, cutting straight to a fear in her that was undeniably there. “I’ll find you.”

Sam turned his face from the others for a moment as he closed his eyes in nearly a grimace of pain. He had no idea what that iteration of Dean consisted of: a ghost, an artificial intelligence, some novel hybrid. All he knew was that he, it, that disembodied voice had the memories and personality of his brother. Dean was equally lost as any of them. It took a lot of courage to face that uncertainty, even if from some objective perspective his mortality might not be on the line.

“Fire in the hole,” Kesi warned as she activated the thermal grenade and rolled it into the server room before quickly closing the door.

Jack and Kesi retreated to the others, far enough that they wouldn’t be hit by any debris should the door reopen or be blown off its track. There was a loud, deep crack followed by hissing. Even with the fire-suppression measures, the sudden intense blast of heat and pressure should have been enough to destroy the servers. 

It was a win, but that didn’t mean that all the implant users were magically free from the influence of the demons. There would undoubtedly be some lingering effects, instincts taught over days, weeks, or months of chemical control. Sam knew as well as anyone that fighting through those impulses might be a lifelong struggle, but at least the damage had been halted. There wouldn’t be newly conjured instructions whispered in their ears, reinforced through pleasure or pain. They could say no.

Sam couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a victory like that. Over the last few years, they’d killed monsters and caught bounties, and while that was positive it had felt too much like trying to stand defiantly against the tide of the ocean. But to save people, to help free them from a plight, that felt different. 

He looked over at Kesi, Jack, and Shae. The three of them had more or less accomplished the task without his help. They had proven themselves resourceful, tough, and capable. Saving people was just as much a part of the family business as hunting things; the kids had made that a reality for the first time in years. His heart swelled with pride as he indulgently watched them for a moment before bracing for the inevitable attack.

Jack and Shae were positioned facing an intersection of the hallway that was in the direction of the building’s center. It seemed that that was the most likely direction the attack would come from. 

The other option was a single corridor that extended past the smoldering server room, back towards what looked like utility closets and storage. Despite its quiet appearance, they couldn’t assume that there was a dead end that way and that it was safe, therefore Sam and Kesi were poised to defend that direction. Hopefully threats on their end would be less likely and minimal, but at the very least they’d have a bit of warning as the attackers had to make their way down a sixty-foot hall.

From the corner of his eye, Sam could see Kesi check her bracer to see that the video feeds were gone. She gripped her angel blade in one hand, then clutched her dad’s necklace in the other. She glanced around anxiously, though he couldn’t tell if she was searching for signs of threats or her father’s ghost. As much as he wanted to offer some verbal encouragement, he didn’t want to accidentally talk over the sound of approaching footsteps. Instead, he caught her glance and tried to give her a look for reassurance. She nodded back, though the tension in her body only lessened ever so slightly.

Sam took a few deep breaths through his mouth, savoring the calm before the combat. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been on a mission with all the kids at the same time. In their subtle tells, he could see that the three of them were anxious about what might come. He didn’t blame them; he was scared. It was part of being brave, of being a hero. The thought of Shae calling him her hero over dinner the other night made him swallow some emotion. He was trying to find the words to quickly tell the kids how proud he was of them, when the sound of running echoed down the hall.

The action was frantic. Demons came from all directions, flanking them. The four of them were fighting over a dozen attackers in an eight-foot-wide hallway. Sam was so busy parrying and dodging knives that he barely had time to assess what was happening behind them. There was a gunshot, but it seemed to safely ricochet down the corridor. The sight of a pistol’s slide being thrown over the small crowd of demons in front of him nearly brought a smile to his face.

He dropped two demons, but his heart was pounding so quickly that it was hard to catch his breath. The gnawing ache of his overworked joints and muscles was beginning to overcome the boost he’d been given by the 30% serum that he’d taken an hour earlier. Some small voice in the back of his brain was screaming that he was going to collapse before the end of the fight, but he pushed it aside. His family was counting on him.

He lunged forward, intercepting a strike that was directed at Kesi while she was distracted downing a different foe. As he knocked away the attacker’s knife, Sam was tackled. The moment he hit the concrete floor he knew that his left wrist had been broken, probably in more than one place. Before the man on top of him could begin pummeling him, Sam reflexively stabbed the guy in the chest. The demon’s body fell on top of him. Jack and Kesi managed to rotate their positions enough to defend him, but both were too preoccupied to give him a hand. It took several painful seconds for him to summon the strength to roll the corpse off of him, and once it was gone Sam had a fleeting regret that he hadn’t just taken the beating. 

The cauterizing liquid on his blade had evidently run out earlier in the fight. While the body had been on top of him, demon blood had dripped onto his chest, creating a large stain on his shirt. He hastily tore off his shirt, only to find that it had soaked into the fiber of his light armor. As much as he wanted to get it away from him, he wasn’t about to remove armor during a melee. Instead he pushed himself up and back onto his feet, then rejoined the fight.

Flecks of blood lightly painted the floor. He had no idea whose it was, but it was clear to him that the others’ blades were also spilling the loathsome liquid. He kept breathing through his respirator, even if it was harder to take full breaths with it on. His lips were pressed shut thanks to the fear of having some demon blood accidentally connecting with his face.

He was running out of strength. His body was shaking, either from fatigue, adrenaline, the oppressive presence of demon blood in the air, or shock from his badly broken arm. With a quick glance, he assessed the situation: there were still nine demons, he was on his last legs, Kesi and Shae had both suffered notable gashes to their limbs (though thankfully, no obvious torso wounds), and Jack’s bleeding and bruised face looked as though it’d been smashed into the wall at least once. They were losing the fight.

The demon fighting Jack was just about to let loose another powerful hit to the nephilim’s already injured head when there was a shout from down the hall. “Don’t break him too bad.” 

The woman’s instruction seemed to immediately create a shift in the momentum of the battle. The demons weren’t any less aggressive, but Sam could see that they were avoiding opportunities at lethal blows. Instead, they were pressing in, attempting to subdue him and the others. 

Shae continued to try fighting them off, but Jack wasn’t in much shape to back her up the way she needed. Sam was injured and exhausted, meanwhile Kesi wasn’t combat-proficient enough to take on the three demons in front of her. Taken altogether, it wasn’t surprising that after a few last swings from Shae, each of them was grabbed and disarmed.

The four of them were roughly marched down a few hallways, away from the labs and back toward the more business environment. Jack missed a step twice, nearly tripping but for the two demons holding onto his arms. Kesi kept glancing around, including making eye contact with the cameras, probably hoping that her dad would be able to help. Shae looked back at Sam and her eyes widened at the large blood stain on his armor.

He took a breath through his respirator, then exhaled, “Not mine.”

For the briefest moment she looked relieved, but it quickly faded as she realized that he had a significant amount of demon blood just over a foot from his face. She opened her mouth to say something, though after glancing at their captors she decided not to speak. It was better that way, not giving the enemy any threads to begin pulling at.

They were taken to a utilitarian conference room with walls that looked to be made of white frost glass. The long, narrow brushed stainless steel tabel had been tossed aside, slightly cracking the opposite wall. There was only one matching chair, but it was tipped over in the far corner and appeared to have a massive dent in its back. 

Melker stood at where the head of the table had likely once been. He wore the same tailored suit that Sam had seen him in at the police station, though his jacket was off and the sleeves of his dress shirt were rolled up. His back was to them as they entered. He was busy watching a large wall display, flipping through security feeds, most of which were blank, though others depicted unconscious users scattered about and a few dead bodies.

“In a perfect world, we’d be able to put implants in each of you, run you through the works for a couple weeks, and get all possible intel and use out of you. Unfortunately, it’s going to take time to rebuild our servers and get our house back in order.” He turned around to face them with a wicked smile. “So I suppose we’ll have to settle for a more hands on questioning.”

The woman who seemed to hold some rank over the demon goons walked over to Melker and handed him their weapons. He tossed the angel blades aside with disinterest, but held up Shae’s knife. His eyes scanned the carvings on the scalloped blade before looking up to consider his prisoners more thoughtfully. As an experiment, he dragged the weapon along the pad of his thumb, producing the telltale orange flicker as it went.

“A week doesn’t pass without a weapons dealer trying to unload some dead angel’s pick, but this—“ He held up the knife. “—is a collector’s item. You aren’t what I thought, Sam. Not some simpleton bounty hunter. Not even a typical hunter.”

The lead demon gestured for him to be brought forward. The two demons escorting Sam forced him along. Honestly, to the extent his feet were dragging, it was due to extreme fatigue more than defiance. He was propped up in front of Melker, then unhanded. It wasn’t as though he was about to overpower anyone with a shattered arm and almost no energy left.

Melker furrowed his brow a bit, then pulled off Sam’s respirator and examined it a bit. Sam’s instinct was to hold his breath, but that wouldn’t last. He inhaled and immediately felt his pulse rise. The scent of the blood on his armor started clawing at the back of his brain.

“What’s this for?” Melker asked.

“Allergies,” he replied, earning a skeptical expression.

Melker tossed the respirator away, then said, “There are always the old ways to get answers.” He placed his hands on the sides of Sam’s face, holding him in place. His black cloud began pouring from his meatsuit and made a move to possess Sam, but stopped short. It hovered for a moment, then flowed back into Melker. He looked thoroughly peeved. “You have one of those annoying tattoos, don’t you?”

The demon used Shae’s knife to cut through the high-impact armor. The blade made quick work of the light armor, slicing a shallow gash in his chest in the process. Melker pulled open the armor to reveal not just the anti-possession tattoo, but also the massive one placed on him by the nest.

Melker’s jaw actually dropped, leaving him gawking at the piece. For a second Sam was hoping that the guy was simply surprised to see such a large tattoo on an old man, but the sickening laugh of delight that came hinted at recognition.

“You’re really him, aren’t you?” Melker’s lips curled into a broad grin. “So Sam Campbell is actually the Crujah? I heard you haunted the city. You were supposed to be the boogeyman.” He chuckled a bit more. “You know you look awfully pathetic for one of the Blood Gods.”

Sam certainly felt pathetic. He could feel his skin turning clammy and his stomach was beginning to ache from sudden-onset hunger. “It’s been a long century,” he replied coldly.

“That it has,” Melker agreed dryly. “The ethereal will take this world back. We’re adapting.” He placed his hand on Sam’s left shoulder and squeezed, snapping his clavicle. Sam grunted in pain, but the demon didn’t even acknowledge it. “Do you have any idea what those little pieces of metal full of numbers mean? We can possess as many meatsuits as we want, whatever terran we want, even your precious vampires. What does a soul matter when you bags of flesh run on chemicals? All it takes is a small nudge of dependency and the whispered promise of a hit… if you follow my instructions.”

Sam’s attention kept drifting from the villainous monologue to the blood on Melker’s thumb that had touched him while breaking his clavicle. There were at least half a dozen other sources of the scent scattered throughout the room, combining to break him down. The longer he was in there, the harder it was becoming to ignore, and Melker’s was particularly captivating. It was a bad sign that he was starting to be able to literally sniff out the power disparity between the demons.

Melker noticed Sam helplessly sneaking glances at his empty hand, then spotted the dribble of blood. He smiled knowingly at Sam. “You know it’s true better than anyone, don’t you? You’re addicted, aren’t you? That’s why you wiped us out so quickly. You couldn’t stop yourself.”

When Sam didn’t answer, Melker dragged the knife along his own flesh, causing blood to well up along the wound, then handed the weapon off to his assistant. The intensity of that old, familiar smell started making Sam tremble.

“Even the Crujah, one of the supposed Blood Gods, is controlled by chemicals.” Melker leaned in recklessly close and asked, “If we sew your mouth shut, how long would it take you to tear out the sutures in search of a taste?”

Sam barely heard the threat. He was busy concentrating on not lunging forward several inches and sinking his teeth into the demon’s neck. The idiot really had no idea what he was dealing with. It was true that it was more agonizing than most conventional sorts of torture, but if things went wrong everyone would lose.

“Leave him alone!” shouted Shae.

Melker looked past Sam to smile at Shae. He blinked his eyes black, then purred, “The young demon. You all are full of oddities, aren’t you?” He shoved Sam to the ground as he took a couple steps toward Shae. “You’ve been stuck in this city all alone, cut off from your people for so long. We could help you—“

“You aren’t my people,” she hissed.

“You think humans are? You think the humans would ever understand you? You’ve been hiding what you are because you know they hate us.”

“I’m not like you.” She shook her head. “We save people.”

Melker laughed, then gestured to Sam. “He killed just as many humans as he did demons, maybe even more. Our people were gone from this city by the time he disappeared. Do you have any idea what he would’ve done if he hadn’t been stopped?” He turned to address Sam. “Would you have left your familiar hunting grounds or just moved on to other prey? You were already a glorified whore for the vampires.”

Sam could hardly bring himself to meet anyone’s gaze. He was exhausted from the combat as well as struggling to fight against his addiction. Then on top of all that, he was ashamed by the memories of what he’d done and how far he might’ve gone if left unchecked. In that moment, he felt profoundly defeated, but what did it mean to Shae for him to accept that portrayal of him as a monster? Whether he liked it or not, she might still be carrying part of that burden. He turned his eyes up to her.

“You’re no god,” Melker continued. “Look at you. You have no powers. There isn’t any strength left in you….”

The demon’s taunting faded in Sam’s mind. He was too busy watching Shae. Her jaw was clenched, a steeled expression painted on her face, but below it he could see her pain. He could see her fighting back tears, being strong despite the uncertainty and fear. His eyes had looked just like that so many times. Of course, it was one of the things they shared.

His instincts had screamed for him to get up somehow and protect her, but those turned quiet as much as Melker’s words. He didn’t have the strength to protect them. But Shae was another story. She’d fought against daunting odds, shown compassion as well as pragmatism, and walked into battle while shouldering an emotional burden he couldn’t fully understand. And he’d been the fool that had attempted to cast her in glass for years, leaving her with a lack of confidence similar to Jack’s.

“You’re right about one thing,” Sam said, interrupting Melker’s rant. He wasn’t looking at the goading villain; he was looking at his daughter. “I’m not strong like I used to be. And sometimes that scares the hell out of me. The world is complicated and cruel, and I was so blinded by my own fear and shame, that I couldn’t see how capable you are. I believe in you!” he shouted over Melker’s annoyed mutters at the heartfelt family moment. “You are a part of me,” he told Shae. “The part that I love the most. You’re the best of me. You’re my strength.”

Melker kicked Sam in the face, knocking him backwards onto the ground. The back of his head connected with the hard floor, turning everything black for a moment. The room spun around him, but he managed to find Shae. Her expression was no longer fear or uncertainty; it was seething rage.

“I was a part of him when we did horrible things, but it wasn’t him and it wasn’t me who was the monster. It was the addiction.” Shae planted her feet, hardly noticing the demon goons holding her arms. “I’m not his sin from back then. I’m the strength of one of the most powerful people to ever set foot in this city. And you cocky ethereal fucks woke that power up.”

Shae’s eyes turned black. She pulled her arms in subtly, then flexed outward in a move that sent the thugs holding her arms flying backwards through opposite walls. The frosted tempered glass along the length of the room shattered, littering the floor. The demons holding Kesi and Jack hesitated to approach her, and began sharing worried glances.

“So—“ Melker barely got the word out before he was telekinetically thrown backwards across the room, away from Sam, into the large display on the far wall, embedding him in the fractured glass. “The baby demon has some moves,” he snarled as he pulled himself from the display, heedless to the slices it was making in his flesh.

“Shove that ‘baby demon’ crap back up your ass. I’m Shae Winchester, _one of_ the Crujah, and a terran-fucking-demon.” She stepped forward while yelling at Melker, but also turned subtly to address all the demons in the room. “This city is my home! I’m not letting some interplanar assholes destroy it.”

While everyone, including the demon goons, was distracted by Shae, Kesi made eye contact with Jack and tilted her head down and forward, the silent signal for slipping a hold. Jack nodded, then mouthed a three-count. They both twisted and slipped through the grips of the demons as they rushed forward to join Shae in the center of the room. 

Seeing their play, Shae telekinetically pulled the discarded angel blades and Sam across the floor to the three of them. They took up defensive positions around him, just as the demons rushed their group. With the two demons that she had thrown through the walls still making their way back, it was eight against three. Shae occasionally telekinetically knocked back one of their foes to temporarily reduce their numbers, but the effect was short-lived and Sam could tell that she would soon run out of the energy necessary to use so much telekinesis.

Things were desperate and he was a liability, sitting on the floor in the middle of a brawl. With his good hand, he opened the emergency kit on his belt, pulled out the 100% syringe, and stabbed it into his leg. As soon as he pressed the plunger down, he felt a surge rush through him. It was like he’d been hit with adrenaline. He was on his feet again, but he knew it was a false high, one that was incredibly dangerous.

He didn’t have a weapon and his bare hands wouldn’t be effective against the physically stronger opponents. The female assistant still had the demon-killing knife. He was trying to figure out a way to get out of the fight that was centered around him and disarm her when he felt an odd sensation. There was an inarticulable tugging feeling past the tips of his fingers, like a phantom touch. It had been decades since he’d felt it, his telekinesis. The sensation was small, but unmistakable. 

He didn’t understand why his powers would suddenly be back to that extent. The growing ambient magic in the city, which had woken up Shae’s dormant powers, shouldn’t have affected him that way. Maybe his visions had been revived because of that, but telekinesis has always required him to have another demon’s blood in his system. The serum only faked the effects of demon blood. Even at such a high dose, it shouldn’t have been about to mimic all of the qualities of the real thing. His eyes settled on the knife that Melker had used to cut open his armor, slicing his chest in the process. The knife had had demon blood on it.

For a moment he couldn’t even think. The realization that he’d been afflicted did more to numb his pain than the 100% serum. It was like the volume in the room had faded to almost nothing. But through the shock, knowing it was there, he could feel true hunger growing inside him. It wasn’t mere temptation brought on by a nostalgic smell. There was a sort of poison working its way through him and being around so much demon blood was making it even worse. He had to get away from the fight, but that meant getting out from the middle of the fray.

Sam suddenly held out his hand, telekinetically yanking the demon-killing knife from the woman’s loose grip. He drew it back to him, then held it ready to fight his way out. Seeing that he was on his feet and armed, Kesi and Shae made a gap for him to join in the battle. The fight was becoming more evenly matched and their tight defensive formation spread out a bit more as everyone moved about the room in the chaos of combat. He stabbed the thug in front of him, creating an opening. Some panicked part of him wanted to make a break for it, to put as much distance as possible between himself and the demon blood, but just as the thought crossed his mind Kesi was tackled to the ground.

She was on her back with a demon nearly a hundred pounds heavier on top of her. It was a miracle that she was holding back his attack. Their blades were caught on each other’s, but the demon was using his offhand to grab her throat. As she choked, she reached up and touched the demon’s face, trying to push him off of her. His flesh below her hand started turning pale, then to ash. He began crumbling to pieces so quickly that her hand passed through the lower half of the man’s head, essentially severing the top from his body. Kesi screamed in horror as she dropped her angel blade and struggled against the corpse on top of her.

The thought of retreating was the furthest thing from Sam’s mind. He ran over to her, then helped roll the charred remnants of the man off of her. When he held out his hand to her to help her up, she recoiled, frightened to touch him.

“It’s okay,” he assured her. “It’s okay. You can do this. You won’t hurt me.”

She cautiously placed her hand in his. Nothing happened. He pulled her up to her feet and she immediately clung to him.

“See. You did it,” he said as he glanced around the room to assess the fight. Jack was just finishing up the last of the goons while Shae stabbed the assistant. Melker started to run, but Shae raised her arm, telekinetically lifting him into the air. She held him in place for a moment, trying to feel out what she was capable of, but in the end she simply stepped forward and stabbed him.

“Sam? You’re shaking,” Kesi said, candid concern in her voice.

There was so much blood on the ground. Somehow it had gotten onto his clothes as well as the others. He let go of her and took a step back. The scent was incredibly strong, a haunting sweet and smoking high. It was becoming difficult to focus. His heart was pounding so fast that Aila voiced some concern, but he couldn’t make out the words. A static seemed to fill the air. He wanted the blood and it was right _there_.

It felt like his last bit of composure was slipping away. He thought about running, trying to get away, but with the building still on lockdown until Kesi or the police could get the shutters up, there was nowhere for him to go. And if he did escape… how easy it was to imagine himself turning up on Nima’s doorstep, desperate for her enabling.

Far off in the static, he could hear voices. Intuition told him that there were creatures, lurking just out of sight. He was losing his grip, being drawn back to that existence that bridged primal impulses and inhuman abilities. Cold sweat beaded on his skin and his hands tingled with an increasing telekinetic power. He tried to pull his eyes from the blood, but he was transfixed. It was so close that—

“Dad.”

He looked over to see Shae, standing about ten feet in front of him. Her expression was sadness touched with worry. She knew; maybe she didn’t know exactly how the blood had gotten into his system, but she knew it was too late to simply get him out of there. When she staggered forward a bit, fresh blood trickled from a dozen gashes in her armor. The scent of her blood was going to his head. It was even stronger than Melker’s.

Sam held up his hand, signaling for her to stay back, then pulled the antagonist syringe from his emergency kit. At best, the shock would leave him severely disabled again. But the alternative to using it was unimaginable. There had been a time when he might have resisted in some desperate attempt to stay alive and in control, in an effort to protect his family. It was a trap, bred from fear. Someday, now or years from then, they would have to live in a world without him there to guide them— and it would be okay. Things would be okay now. As he looked at his family, he held the antagonist injection with new conviction despite his shaking hand.

“I’m not scared,” he said while looking at each of them in turn, finally settling on his daughter. “Because I believe in you. Whatever comes next, I know you all can do it.”

He jabbed the needle into his thigh, then pressed the plunger. Burning spread through his veins and the world became bright for a moment. The last thing he saw was Shae’s face before everything turned black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading the story! If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving kudos or a comment, or recommending it to a friend.
> 
> I had mildly conflicted feelings about ending the story how I did. Normally, I like to largely wrap up the case/action/political conflict at the end of the story, but this fic isn’t really about the case or even the state of the city. The heart of the story is Sam gaining and instilling confidence in the kids, so it shouldn’t matter that the external conflict isn’t tied up with a fit little bow. In a way, his faith is more meaningful because they're going into an unknown.
> 
> This story was originally a very different creature. My friend asked me what I’d want for a Supernatural spin-off and I (only slightly jokingly) said, “Dystopian cyberpunk future where old!Sam is the man-in-the-chair to a new generation of hunters.” I jotted down a few snippets, creating the characters of Shea and Kesi. The idea was to have them share the POV fairly equally, with Sam eventually passing the torch through a mid-season death (in a classic spin-off fashion). It was just a little musing, no more than 2,000 words, but after signing up for the SWBB I decided to adapt the premise to be a story about Sam’s perspective. But yeah, that’s why the story has so many open threads; it’s my version of a backdoor pilot.
> 
> And because I’m a complete asshole and I like the idea of rewarding/tormenting people for reading the after notes, here’s a little after credits scene:
> 
> Sam was sitting in the bunker library. He didn’t have any cravings and his head was clear. In fact, he felt better than he had in a long time. His back and knees weren’t bothering him. There was a sort of lightness to everything, the peace of having a long term pain that one hardly even noticed removed.
> 
> His hands were scar free. His hair was brown. When he reached up, there weren’t any wrinkles on his face, though the scars from the wraith lingered. He was younger, maybe in his early forties.
> 
> On the table in front of him was a chessboard. Billie sat across from him, poised as his opponent. Her sickle rested beside the board. He remembered his conversation with the previous Death. There hadn’t been any legendary game, battling for his life. Maybe that was because the possibility of death had never been on the table before; now it literally was.
> 
> Billie met his gaze with her usual, smooth composure. She was an immortal with an incomprehensible amount of power, and she certainly acted like it. Without a greeting or explanation of the rules, she picked up a pawn and made her opening move.
> 
> “Sam, we need to talk about my daughter.”


End file.
